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THE VALIANT 
GENTLEMAN 





















THE VALIANT 
GENTLEMAN 

By M. J. STUART 

Kft-VUe, h N ■ w 



BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 











Copyright, 1925 

By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

(INCORPORATED) 


Printed in the United States of America 
Printed by The VaU-Ballou Press, Binghamton and New York 
Bound by the Boston Bookbinding Company 
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 




THE VALIANT 
GENTLEMAN 















r 








THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


CHAPTER 1 

“And I hope you are ashamed of yourself, Felix!” 
said his aunt with venom. 

She stood over him, which—for she was a small 
woman—was not impressive, and terrorised him 
frankly, as pigmies have a habit of doing with their 
menfolk. From the chair on his left came a 
gurgle of quick laughter, where his cousin, Maud 
Dennison, swung slim ankles and derided the pair 
of them. 

“Are you sure that you are ashamed of yourself, 
Felix? Are you wholly and utterly sure? She 
will forgive you if you are, Felix. She came here 
for that purpose. I know-” 

“Be quiet, Maud!” Her stepmother swung 
round upon her wrathfully. “You have no busi¬ 
ness to be here, and you know it. Have you any¬ 
thing to say for yourself, Felix?” 



4 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“What about?” said the culprit weakly, and 
then, quelled by her eye, abandoned his position 
hastily. 

“Of course you mean about the Lovatts. I 
knew you did; but I couldn’t help it. I really 
couldn’t.” 

“Oh!” said his aunt with emphasis. 

“I am not sorry for you,” she added rather un¬ 
necessarily, “in the least.” 

Receiving no immediate answer to this, she 
allowed herself to relax a little, and her eyes 
travelled reflectively round the soft-toned, soft- 
cushioned room, which was Felix’s particular 
pride, and a masterpiece of comfort. 

“She has been here, of course,” she stated with 
depressed certainty. 

“She has.” 

“And alone, I suppose?” 

“Afraid so, beloved aunt.” Felix grinned up 
at her with a large display of fine teeth. “That 
alone would blight any woman’s reputation, 
wouldn’t it? I rather wonder, under the circum¬ 
stances, that you care, unchaperoned—Maud 
doesn’t count-” 

“I am not asking,” said his aunt, refusing to be 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


5 


drawn from the main issue, “whether these visits 
were paid at reasonable hours, assuming that there 
is a reasonable hour for that sort of thing. As to 
that I express no opinion. I do not, thank heaven, 
belong to this generation, and am not competent 
to judge.” 

“The hour was quite reasonable,” Felix assured 
her. “Four or five o’clock in the afternoon as a 
rule. But if it had been four or five o’clock in the 
morning, as Lovatt charitably supposes-” 

“Oh, we all know what a saint you are, Fe!” 
Maud Dennison uncrossed her ankles and leaned 
sideways, slipping a cool arm round his neck. 
“Tell a fellow now! Felix, where were you on 
that night of infamous memory?” 

“Where we said we were. On the Embankment, 
watching the sun rise.” 

“Yes, I know. But really?” 

“Maud, you unprincipled little Sapphira!” 
Felix stirred, exasperated, under the encircling 
arm. “Don’t you even know the truth when you 
see it? If I wanted to invent a lie I’d make up a 
better one. Jan was fed up with dancing, and I 
wanted a breath of fresh air, so I took her out to 
see the sun rise. It may have been unusual, but 



6 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


I’m hanged if I see that it was immoral. It just 
happened.” 

“And you didn’t make love to her? Not the 
teeniest, teeniest bit?” 

“Not the teeniest bit. There, young woman, 
you’ve got the truth. Hang on to it.” 

“But you must have been in love with her. Oh, 
Felix, are you?” 

“Aunt Anne”—the goaded Felix turned to 
higher authority—“will you turn this impossible 
young person out of the room, or shall I have to 
take up my chair and walk? I will not be baited 
by two women at once! ’Tisn’t fair!” 

“You should be more careful to keep out of hot 
water,” said Mrs. Dennison unsympathetically. 
“Maud, I have already told you that I would be 
very much happier if you would go somewhere else. 
I know by bitter experience that it is wholly useless 
to try to exert an authority which I do not possess, 
but-” 

“Rats!” said Maud defiantly. “I am going to 
stay and stick up for Felix.” 

“Thanks, but you needn’t trouble.” 

“Very well, I shall stick up for Jan then,” said 
Maud with fine impartiality. “I don’t care who I 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


7 


stick up for. Have you settled to get married when 
she has been divorced?” 

“Good heavens! Don’t anticipate things like 
that! She isn’t going to be divorced.” 

“Oh!” Maud made round eyes at him. “My 
dear Fe, you don’t seriously imagine that you have 
a chance of getting out of it?” 

“Of course I do. I haven’t done anything rotten, 
neither has Jan. We may have been a bit im¬ 
prudent, but what do you expect? She’s only a 
child.” 

“A fairly sophisticated one,” said his aunt 
grimly. 

“No, the sophistication is only skin deep.” 
Felix rose to his feet with a jerk. “Look here, 
Aunt Anne, I know what you and everybody else 
will be saying about Jan for the next few weeks, 
and it’s damned unfair. She’s the openest thing 
that ever breathed. There’s never been any secret 
about the way she lived—out at all sorts of hours 
with all sorts of people. If Lovatt didn’t like 
it he should have told her so, or else he should 
have gone about with her. What sort of justice 
is there in marrying a girl of nineteen and then 
turning her loose on the world, and ignoring her 


8 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


existence as if he were her aged grandmother, or 
her aunt by marriage? The situation has been 
grotesque. If he were sixty, or deformed, or bed¬ 
ridden, I could understand it. Of course, Jan has 
been spoiled, and, of course, she has been run after 
a lot more than was good for her, but that’s all the 
trouble amounts to.” 

“But I like Anthony enormously,” said Maud 
the irrepressible. “He has eyes like a nice dog—a 
terrier, I think. Jan thinks so, too, because I 
asked her. She said she always wanted to pull his 
ears and feed him with sugar, but he was never 
about for her to do it. When you are married to 
her, Fe, take care always to be about. I don’t 
think Jan likes being left by herself so much. 
Doggy eyes and standing from under are all very 
well in their way, but they end in divorce suits, 
though I don’t know where Anthony found the 
spirit. It isn’t the sort of thing one would have 
expected from him.” 

“Very well,” said Felix defiantly, “if I am to be 
all the goat there is, say so and get it over; but I 
won’t have either of you running down Jan. She’s 
the sweetest, straightest boy-woman that the Lord 
ever created, and she has got to go through hell. 
And it isn’t fair.” 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


9 


“I love you, Felix,” said Maud impulsively, and 
kissed him. “You are the first scandal that ever 
happened in our family, and it is very shocking, 
but I don’t care, and I wouldn’t sell my relation¬ 
ship to you for all the paper money in the Bank of 
England. Oh, all right, Mother! I’m going.” 

She departed, leaving a certain breeziness behind 
her. 

“Thank heaven, that child will be married in a 
few weeks!” said Mrs. Dennison. “Your esclandre 
is most vilely timed, Felix.” 

“Well, I didn’t stage manage it, you know.” 

“I suppose not. You know that you’re not to 
be the only co-respondent, of course?” 

“As if that made any difference!” said Felix 
scornfully. 

Followed a pause. A regretful sigh from Mrs. 
Dennison heralded a softened mood. 

“You are in love with her, I suppose. I may be 
plagiarising Maud, but I should like to know.” 

“So should I,” said Felix thoughtfully. “No.” 
He caught the motion of her lifted eyebrows. 
“That isn’t caution. It’s the simple truth. I 
really don’t know.” 

He strolled over to the window and stood there, 
looking out into the street, his hands thrust deep 


10 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


into his pockets, his reddish brows knitted into a 
thoughtful frown. 

“I think I’m not,” he decided finally. “We 
are pals, and one doesn’t seem to fall in love with 
a pal. But I can’t imagine living in the same house 
and not doing it. Lovatt is off his head!” 

“He may be,” Mrs. Dennison assented grimly, 
“hut not for that reason. He is crazier over his 
wife than you will ever be, my uncertain young 
man. But the main point is that he will get his 
case.” 

“Pessimist!” 

“My dear boy, look things in the face. A Brit¬ 
ish jury isn’t kind to Jan’s sort, for one thing, and 
Jan has been behaving madly. There is no other 
word for it. The modern girl? Yes, I know, 
but you can’t modernise primitive things like wed¬ 
lock, and human jealousy. I say nothing against 
young Holland. From the little I have seen of him 
he seems a decent enough sort of boy, but as for the 
Waring man-” 

“I know,” said Felix tersely. “He’s a rotter.” 

“A fact which your unsophisticated Jan ig¬ 
nores?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. He is clever in a sort of 
a way, and an interesting beast. Beloved aunt, 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


11 


why are you trying to make a case against Jan 
as though you didn’t like her? I know that you 
do.” 

“I do,” Mrs. Dennison admitted ruefully. “I 
like the way she looks at one with her eyes wide 
open, instead of all that eyelash work one gets such 
a lot of. I like the way she shakes hands. I like 
her habit of telling the truth, and paying when she 
loses a bet. If she had been a child of mine I 
would have slapped her, and loved her, and taken 
better care of her than her deplorable family ap¬ 
pear to have done. Well, you may be right about 
her; in fact, I think you are; but if you weren’t I 
should still say that there were extenuating circum¬ 
stances. I knew Jack Desmond before you did, 
Felix, and the mere fact of having him for a father 
would extenuate most things, the handsome scamp. 
He sold that poor, lovely baby to Anthony as 
jubilantly as if she had been a bundle of shares in a 
mythical oil company. That marriage of theirs 
was the most pathetic, blindfold thing I ever at¬ 
tended. All the love on one side, and nothing but 
childishness, and joie de vivre, and the most out¬ 
rageous loveliness on the other—not an atom of 
training, of course, and just enough worldliness to 
make her snap her fingers at any sort of common 


12 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


sense. In my day there was less anxiety among 
the sheep to act like goats. I don’t know that we 
were any the better for it, but at least it was easier 
to tell one from the other. As it is, I would hes¬ 
itate to condemn the worst of my acquaintances, 
but the many-headed argues the other way about. 
Be good to the child, Felix. She’ll need it. It 
can’t be much fun to be married, and divorced, 
and ostracised all before cutting one’s wisdom 
teeth. Anthony is in the wrong about this, but he 
will get his decree; also, incidentally, he will get 
any sympathy that happens to be going.” 

“He is welcome to it,” said Felix bitterly. 

“Not much of a comfort, I suppose. Oh, 
heavens! why won’t young people learn to take life 
as it comes. Well, I suppose there is nothing for 
it but to go through with the business.” Mrs. 
Dennison shrugged her shoulders dejectedly, and 
rose, pulling on her gloves. 

“There are moments,” she added wistfully, 
“when I am reconciled to being an old woman.” 


CHAPTER II 


“And so you are to have your freedom again,” 
Jan wrote, and bit viciously at the tip of her 
quill. “Much good may it do you, my very 
dear enemy! I wish I had the strength of mind 
to wish you well and part friends, but I haven’t. 
The utmost magnanimity will run to is just a 
little bit short of 6 Go to Hades!’ I am returning 
your deed of settlement, which doesn’t interest 
me, also your letter—in pieces. Au revoir. 

“Yours till the decree is made absolute, 
“Jan Lovatt.” 

She signed her name with a flourish, then paused 
dubious whether or not to strike out the second half 
of it. Deciding in the negative, she laid down her 
pen, gathered up half a dozen fragments of torn 
paper and pinned them ostentatiously to the sheet 
before she folded it to slip into the envelope, and 
reached for the sealing-wax. Then she turned to 
Felix, who, entering a few moments before, had 
been bidden to sit down and wait her pleasure. 

“I can talk to you now if you like, my dear.” 

13 


14 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“And what, may I ask, was that?” 

Jan rose to her feet, clasping her hands behind 
her back in the lively imitation of a defiant wren. 

“Felix, he has the impertinence—the imperti¬ 
nence after all that has happened—to offer me 
money!” 

“Well, why shouldn’t he? I think it’s a fairly 
obvious duty.” 

“Is it? Well, I have thrown it back at him as 
hard as I could. Will you ring for tea, please, 
dear?” 

She turned away, and stood leaning her elbow 
against the mantelpiece, studying the hearthrug 
with sombre, reflective eyes. Not yet or for many 
weeks to come would Jan learn to accept her des¬ 
tiny with anything approaching resignation, but 
the first mood of anguished protest had passed. 
Indignation and wounded pride were still too keen 
to betray the deeper underlying ache. She was 
obsessed by a burning sense of injustice. 

“I’ve been given the name and been punished 
for it,” she cried bitterly, “but I haven’t had the 
fun of the game, ever, ever. No!” in response to 
the mocking devilry in the blue eyes, “I’m not 
saying that I wanted it. I didn’t, I didn’t! Felix, 
you know I didn’t!” 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


15 


“You didn’t want it with me certainly.” 

“Or with anybody. Felix, say it!” 

“Or with anybody,” he concurred obligingly. 
“But look here, there’s no reason on earth why you 
shouldn’t have the game now if you feel like it. 
I’ve eight hundred a year. Not riches, perhaps, 
but enough for two to play on in a limited sort of 
way. Would you care to marry me, Jan?” 

Jan stared at him a moment wide-eyed, and then 
flushed painfully to the sleek, dark hair, cut square 
above her eyebrows. Her twenty-two years had 
left her oddly childish in speech and expres¬ 
sion, and she was as transparent as a healthy 
boy. 

“I suppose you had to say that,” she whispered 
miserably, and Felix nodded cheerfully. 

“Right. I had to. That was a duty proposal 
only, and, now that we’ve done it and got it over. 
I’ll do it again for the love of the thing. Will you 
marry me, dear?” 

“I was wrong,” said Jan indistinctly. “You 
didn’t ‘have to.’ I forgot—the circumstances. 
When a woman has two—or three—lovers-” 

His hand shot out, closing over her wrist, and 
stopped her in the middle of the sentence. From 
his easy position, sprawling among the cushions of 



16 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


his chair, he looked up at her, pleasant-eyed, and 
shook a reproachful finger. 

“Don’t say things like that, Jan. You don’t 
have to. They mean nothing, and they sound 
darned bitter. That’s the worst thing that can 
happen to man, woman, or child, and you’re all 
three in your way. Yes, if I were asked to define 
you I should say, ‘A valiant little gentleman.’ 
Live up to it, Jan. It’s high praise in its way. 
Now, as to your objection, I have the best of reasons 
for knowing that a British jury may err, and as 
there was no more between you and Waring, or 
Holland, than there was between you and me-” 

“There wasn’t.” 

“Bless you, don’t I know that? If there had 
been, I’m no Galahad myself, but I know there 
wasn’t, and, on my honour, I’ll never mention the 
name of either to you again. The subject is closed. 
Well, Jan?” 

“I won’t.” 

“Won’t you? Why not, infant?” 

“I don’t love you, Felix.” 

“Thanks!” Felix received the information with 
a mocking inclination of the head. “Is love ab¬ 
solutely necessary to our menage , little woman? 
We’ve liking, comradeship, a mutual knowledge of 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 17 

each other’s defects. Not bad, that, to start house¬ 
keeping on.” 

“It isn’t enough, and if it were—Felix, if we 
married everybody would say that it was true!” 

Felix shook his head regretfully. 

“I hate to discourage you, my dear Jan, but that 
is one of the things you have got to face. Our 
marrying or not marrying won’t affect it. If I 
were the only co-respondent it might, but, as you 
pointed out just now, the fact that I’m not does 
complicate matters from that point of view. Now 
I am going to be rather brutal and hit you about 
the head. You won’t like it, but as it’s for your 
good I hope you will grin and bear it. Firstly, 
have you any money?” 

“Do you mean private income?” 

“Yes.” 

“None. When I’ve paid my bills I shall have 
about one hundred pounds in hand, and even that 
is Tony’s money, strictly speaking.” 

“Can your people afford to give you an allow¬ 
ance?” 

“Perhaps they could,” Jan acknowledged du¬ 
biously, “but I’m pretty sure they won’t if they 
can help it. There are six of us, you see; be¬ 
sides—they believe it” 


18 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“That’s new, isn’t it?” 

“Not very. You see, daddy—it isn’t his fault 
really—but he always believes what other people 
believe.” 

“Ah! That means, I suppose, that you couldn’t 
go back home to live?” 

An emphatic shake of the head. 

“Well, then, have you any means of earning a 
living?” 

“I’ve not been trained for anything in particu¬ 
lar.” 

“That means that you haven’t. In our highly 
civilised country you have to be jolly highly trained 
before you can earn thirty shillings a week. Do 
you see where we are drifting, Jan?” 

“It’s fairly obvious. You mean that I haven’t 
any choice; that I’ll have to marry you or starve.” 
Jan turned away, one foot beating a nervous tattoo 
on the carpet. “Very well, I’ll starve.” 

A soft chuckle answered her. 

“Am I as repulsive as all that , Jan?” 

She whirled upon him in consternation, and flung 
herself upon the arm of his chair, one arm thrown 
in careless caress about his shoulders. 

“That—but of course I did not mean that. How 
could I? Don’t you see, Felix, marrying for—for 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


19 


a living is as bad as—as what they say I’ve done, 
and if it weren’t I’m smirched—smirched from 
head to foot. You might as well marry a leper. 
If I let you do it people wouldn’t come to our 
house—not decent people. They’d pretend not to 
see us in the street. They’d—oh, you know it all. 
If you loved me perhaps I might let you sacrifice 
yourself for me, because then, perhaps—just per¬ 
haps—I might be worth it to you, but I know you 
don’t.” 

“Oh, yes, I do, in a reasonable sort of way.” 

“Felix, how absurd! But it’s true, and of me, 
too. My dear, I won’t live with you on such terms. 
It would be more—more honest to get my living in 
the streets, because then I suppose I should be 
giving something for value received, not—not 
sticking a friend with a horse.” 

“I hate your metaphors,” said Felix se¬ 
verely. “However, if you feel that way about 
it I won’t press the point. Now do you still 
think it contemptible of Lovatt to offer you 
money?” 

Jan shook her head slowly. A furrow creased 
itself between her straight brows, and the bright, 
uneasy colour made its appearance again, redden¬ 
ing even the soft curve of her neck. Jan had tem- 


20 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 

per, and the compressed line of her mouth betrayed 
it. 

“I won’t take money from Tony!” she said in a 
fierce undertone, and the sharp tattoo with the 
slipper began again, rapping out defiance with 
every staccato tap-tap. Felix regarded her with 
quiet amusement which masked a very real con¬ 
cern. 

66 What a little fury you are, Jan! Why won’t 
you? That would be money for value received 
with a vengeance!” 

“Just because,” said Jan between her teeth. 
“Oh, it’s pride, of course, but aren’t I to have any 
pride? He has whipped me through the streets 
at a cart-tail for nothing—just nothing, and now, 
when he considers that I’ve had sufficient punish¬ 
ment for what I never did, he expects me to accept 
an allowance to make up for my bruises. I’ll see 
him damned first!” 

Felix regarded her soberly for a moment, and 
poured himself out a cup of tea before he answered 
her. He drank it in slow sips, watching her in¬ 
tently over the rim of his teacup, spooned out the 
sugar, and crunched it thoughtfully. When the 
last of it had dissolved on his tongue he shook his 
head at her. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


21 


“Look here, Jan, it wasn’t for nothing. Things 
don’t pan out like that in this world. You aren’t 
the only one in this, you know.” 

“I know I’m not.” Jan’s hot flush deepened 
again at the implication. “Oh, my dear, my dear, 
I’m sorry to drag you into this. If I could have 
monopolised the dirt I would, but I’ve been so 
helpless in it all. If I’ve been talking of myself 
all this while, it isn’t that I don’t know. Do you 
mind it terribly?” 

“Oh, I suppose I shall have a rather highly- 
coloured reputation for a time, but what of it? I 
shall like a little notoriety. It would be much 
more reasonable of you to throw things at my head 
for having landed you in this mess. It takes two 
to make a flirtation, you know, and heaven knows 
how far I would have gone if you had shown the 
faintest sign of wanting to accompany me. Prob¬ 
ably the limit. My name isn’t Percival, and you 
are a lovely little devil. No, the person I referred 
to when I pointed out that you weren’t the only one 
in this was Lovatt. I was watching his face when 
I wasn’t engaged in giving my own little recitation. 
He has a fair control of his features, but most of the 
time he was pretty nearly as white as you were. 
You have broken that fellow’s heart, Jan.” 


22 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Heart! He hasn’t got one.” 

“Well, you should know,” Felix admitted 
equably, having further recourse to his teacup. 
“At the same time, I’m willing to bet considerably 
more than I can afford that in this case you don’t. 
He has one all right, and it’s busted. You see, 
Jan, no man living would have brought on that case 
at all unless he believed at least half of it. It’s no 
good arguing with belief. Either you do or you 
don’t. And if you do about a thing like that it’s 
the very devil, with seven horns and a tail. Do 
you think he enjoyed threshing out all the abom¬ 
inably intimate detail before those ghouls of law¬ 
yers? I may say that I, personally, intend to 
sandbag every lawyer I meet from now on. No, 
my child, you may have been whipped to make a 
London holiday, but the man who did the whipping 
was not to be envied his job. His own fault, of 
course, but does that make it any easier to put up 
with? You know it doesn’t. Try to think as 
kindly of him as you can, little Jan!” 

He paused, looking up at her, his pleasant, red- 
brown face crinkled into a kindly smile which al¬ 
most obscured the friendly eyes under the tufted 
eyebrows. He was fond of Jan. The youthful, 
crude directness of her, the simplicity, the warm- 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


23 


hearted generosity, appealed to him even more than 
her slim body. A very little and he could have 
fallen tempestuously in love with her. 

“If Lovatt could only see us now,” he reflected, 
with a moment’s dancing malice, “I suppose he 
would say that his case was proved up to the hilt, 
and here have I been turned down twice in one 
afternoon. Drat the fellow!” 

His subdued chuckle recalled the gaze of Jan’s 
wide grey eyes. 

“Do you blame me, Felix?” she demanded, with 
a hint of trepidation, more than a hint of defiance. 

“Blame you? Good heavens, no! But look 
here, infant, I want to give you some nice ponder¬ 
ous advice for your good. Tear up that letter to 
Lovatt. Take the allowance he offers, and go on 
the Continent for a little while. There are heaps 
of places in Norway, for instance, where one can be 
perfectly happy and healthy and never meet a soul 
one knows. I know you don’t want a seem to run 
away, but there’s no earthly good to be got by 
facing this thing out, and without money you can’t 
face it out, anyway. The majority of people have 
the most childlike faith in a judge and jury, and 
are probably right to have it in nine cases out of 
ten. It’s a hopeless business to try to persuade 


24 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


them that you are the tenth case. Go abroad and 
let it be forgotten.” 

“I can’t,” muttered Jan under her breath. 
There was a wincing pride that was almost agony 
in the grey eyes. “Felix, I didn’t tell you—quite 
everything. Tony makes his offer conditional on 
my promise not to see him—or write to him again 
—ever while we live.” 

There was a silence, broken by Felix’s low 
whistle, and for a moment his good-natured blue 
eyes flickered angrily. 

“That’s nasty of him,” he observed curtly, and 
then, “Well, Jan, I suppose it isn’t absolutely un¬ 
usual. Do you want to see the fellow, by any 
chance?” 

“Of course I don’t, but I’m damned if I’ll prom¬ 
ise not to, and admit that I’m in the wrong.” 

Felix rose to his feet and considered her, his 
hands in his pockets, his head tilted aslant. There 
was a suspicious brightness in her eyes that had not 
been there before, and the soft curves of her mouth 
were tremulous. 

“Jan,” he challenged suddenly, “I believe you’re 
in love with the fellow still!” 

“You beast!” choked Jan, and turned abruptly 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 25 

away, rubbing her wrist across her eyes, more like 
a naughty schoolboy than ever. 

“Fm not, I’m not!” The voice came with broken 
ferocity over a drooping shoulder. “No one, no 
one could go on liking a man who wants to—to 
bribe one to keep away from him. I—I detest 
the thought of him!” 

“Jan, my Jan!” crooned Felix, motherlike, and 
gathered the little body to him. 

It came a rigid bundle of muscle, and Jan, after 
a long, shuddering gulp, raised her face to him, 
flushed and smeared in places, but fierce-eyed still 
behind the wet lashes. 

“I wasn’t crying,” she whispered tensely. “I— 
was only tired, and I hate you, and I want you to 
go now, at once—and I won’t be hugged!” 

And she made her slim body as unyielding as a 
broomstick. 

Felix, that Solomon of an understanding heart, 
released her with an amiable shrug, and reached 
for his hat. 

“It’s all right, Jan,” he assured her soothingly. 
“I know your nerves are torn to pieces. Anyone 
would cry. And look here, dear, my offer holds 
good for the next six months. Wire me at any 


26 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


time you feel like it, and I’ll come to you wherever 
you are and bring a special licence with me; and 
even if you don’t feel like marrying me you’ll send 
if you get in a tight place, won’t you, Jan? What 
else is friendship for, I should like to know? And 
we are friends, aren’t we?” 

He paused at the door, smiling his wide, all- 
embracing smile, and Jan nodded energetically 
without turning her head. 


CHAPTER III 


Jan had dismissed Felix on an impulse of regal 
courage. In the days that followed she knew many 
panic-stricken moments when the temptation to re¬ 
call him was almost too great to be borne, when 
the vague terrors of poverty and loneliness haunted 
her into the early hours of the morning, and she 
lay shivering, her face pressed close against the 
rumpled pillow. 

Desmond had visited her earlier in the week, 
affectionate still, but obviously embarrassed at the 
thought of a possible demand for shelter. 

“It’s the girls who make it so difficult,” he 
explained. “If they weren’t growing up—but as 
it is it wouldn’t be fair.” 

“You mean I’m not to come home?” said Jan 
slowly. She sat staring down at the floor, her 
hands pressed tight against her breast to still the 
waves of shame which were sweeping over her. 
“If you say that, I won’t come, of course. It would 
be awkward. I suppose people wouldn’t like 
meeting me.” 


27 


28 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


Then, the question had to get itself asked: 

“Daddy, it is only that, isn’t it? You don’t— 
you can’t believe it?" 

His eyes avoided her, and the next moment she 
was down on her knees beside his chair, wrenching 
at his coat with passionate, supplicating hands. 

“Daddy, daddy, you mustn’t believe it! You 
mustn’t! You shan’t!” 

Afterwards it was difficult, if not impossible, to 
raise the question of an allowance, and Desmond, 
who constitutionally never had any money, was 
content to let it lie. 

“I tell you what you are, you are too proud,” 
said Jan to herself when she reviewed the situation. 
“Too proud, and yet you lose hold of yourself like 
a baby. It is ridiculous!” 

She pounced upon the largest sofa cushion, up¬ 
ended it for conversational purposes, and pressed 
her young cheek against the taffeta. 

“What am I to do, you fat and stupid thing?” 
she demanded fiercely. “How am I going to earn 
a living? What am I good for at all at all? I 
haven’t the nerve to be a film star; besides, I don’t 
believe I can act; and I haven’t the height to be a 
mannequin. It will have to be something where I 
can use my looks, because they are the only real 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 29 

asset I ve got, and it will have to be something 
where I needn’t be recognised. That’s the heart of 
it, you silly bundle of feathers. I don’t see how 
I can put myself on the labour-market without seem¬ 
ing to make a ghastly sort of advertisement out of 
the things that have happened to me. I’ve simply 
got to avoid being recognised, and how I’m going to 
do it after being photographed such a lot I simply 
don’t see.” 

She paused for breath, and hit her confidante 
over the head. 

It was later in the same day that Mrs. Dennison 
rang her up to demand a visit. 

“I am an old woman,” she prefaced her invita¬ 
tion rather unnecessarily, “and there are times 
when I can’t bear myself for another hour. Be¬ 
sides, I—I’m fond of you, Jan.” 

She was, and, being of the school which kisses, 
she took Jan in her arms and gave her two brief 
pecks in exchange for the touch of velvet-soft lips. 

“If you had been my daughter,” she said ir¬ 
relevantly, “you would have been different here 
and there, but I wouldn’t have altered you much.” 
She held Jan off for a moment, with hands on her 
shoulders, and then shook her head wistfully. 
“You’re taking this badly, my dear.” 


30 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Am I? I thought I was taking it rather well.” 

“Oh, well. You know what I mean. To 
heart.” 

“I suppose so.” Jan sat back on her heels, 
balancing herself with hands outflung on either 
side, and raised the straight, fearless eyes that 
Mrs. Dennison loved. “Do you think I make too 
much of it? Perhaps people don’t really avoid 
me; perhaps everyone doesn’t really know about 
it; but I feel that I’ve been branded all over my 
face, all over my neck, under my clothes. Some¬ 
times when I think of what was said in that horrible 
court I feel as if I shall never have any real clothes 
again. All those eyes looking through me, and 
into me, and thinking—thinking-” 

Jan’s small face was flooded with bright colour, 
and she bent her head, tracing the pattern in the 
carpet with an absorbed finger. 

“I never knew—a pillory—was like that,” she 
muttered hopelessly. 

There was a little miserable silence. When 
Mrs. Dennison spoke again her voice had a catch in 
it. 

“My dear, if I say I’m sorry I suppose you’ll 
hate me for flinging the obvious at you, and beyond 
that I simply can’t think of anything to say. I do 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


31 


think and believe that you make the scandal out 
as worse than it really is, but I’m not idiot enough 
to talk about the consciousness of innocence being 
a support, because-” 

“It doesn’t help. Not at all.” 

“I can’t even imagine that it might make things 
worse,” Mrs. Dennison admitted dispassionately. 
“If heaven had not seen fit to remove my dear 
George—in my day we talked a great deal about 
marrying for love, but very few of us attempted it 
—well, I should have seen to it that he had his 
reasons for a complaint after, if not before, he 
made it. A most unpleasant man, my dear, with a 
passion for having his own way, which I never saw 
my way to gratify. But perhaps that is hardly 
to the point. I was wondering, Jan—my old 
dragoon of a doctor has forbidden me to spend 
another winter in England, and I shall have to take 
my wearisome old self off to some place where 
the climate is warm and dry—not necessarily any¬ 
where fashionable. If you care to see me through 
the dark months I’ll be very grateful to you, Jan, 
and you needn’t feel that your independence has 
been bruised because you spent a little part of 
your springtime on a querulous old woman.” 

“Did Felix ask you to do that?” 



32 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“In so many words, no. Aren’t I to be allowed 
to have a fondness for you myself, child?” 

“I wonder if you know how grateful I am,” said 
Jan. She folded her arms about the thin knees 
and laid her chin upon them, gazing up with grave, 
candid eyes. “Aunt Anne”—Jan had adopted 
Felix’s relative almost at the first meeting— 
“it isn’t independence only, and it isn’t that I 
don’t love you for all your sweetness, but I can’t 
live on you like that. I’ve got to stand on my 
own feet and work, with my hands if I can, and 
find out if there really is anything worth hav¬ 
ing deep down at the bottom of everything that is 
selfish and frivolous and worthless. Jan Lovatt 
is going to die, and be rolled up and put away in a 
drawer out of sight. I don’t know how I’m going 
to do it quite, and I don’t suppose it’s going to be 
easy, but if I really fight my hardest, and sacrifice 
all the nice, safe cushioniness which has turned me 
into the horrid little parasite I am—well, it will be 
something, won’t it?” 

“Are you afire for martyrdom, child?” 

“I don’t think so.” Jan’s lips quivered a mo¬ 
ment with sudden mirth. “I’m planning to live in 
a cheap boarding-house and have kippers for tea, 
and there isn’t anything very heroic about that, but 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


33 


I’m certain I don’t want to sponge on you, or vic¬ 
timise Felix, or blackmail Daddy. I’ve been liv¬ 
ing on other people all my life, and somehow it has 
got to stop.” 

“And what about me, you self-willed young 
woman? Don’t I need you?” 

“Dearest one, it’s sweet of you to say it, but in 
fact you don’t. You have got an excellent maid, 
and an excellent companion—a much better one 
than I could ever possibly be—and, to cap it all, 
though you may, like the saint you are, offer to 
take me to some little village where nobody ever 
comes and nurse my broken heart in retirement, 
you know that you are really pining for Davos, 
and crowds of people, and all the things you can’t 
possibly have with me at your elbow. It’s no use 
denying it, Aunt Anne. I know, because, you see, 
those are just the things I have always wanted my¬ 
self.” 

They argued it, a little half-heartedly, for when 
one knows her own mind discussion between women 
is a futile thing. Then Jan rose to go, stoop¬ 
ing to the withered cheek with impulsive tender¬ 
ness. 

“How many kinds of a fool am I, Aunt Anne?” 

“Most sorts, I should think.” The sharp eyes 


34 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


twinkled mistily. “My dear, why must you run 
upon the swords?” 

“So that I shan’t run away from them, I think. 

I have to take to my heels either way. Good-bye, 
you sweet, wise philanthropist.” 

“Rubbish! A lot of good you have let me do!” 

“ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’ Only 
this morning I thought I had been bom into a world 
of snakes and crocodiles, because a few months ago 
I could have sworn that everybody liked me, and 
now-” 

A moment later she threw off the self-commis- 
eration with a quick toss of the head. 

“Aunt Anne, isn’t it funny how life seems all 
streaky sometimes, dark and light, like a day in 
April?” 

“Not being a philosopher, I see no humour in 
the dark bits myself.” 

“Oh, well, if one keeps telling oneself that they 
are only patches-” 

Jan settled her hat at an angle, and shrugged her 
shoulders defiantly, but her smile was tremulous. 

“Good-bye, Aunt Anne.” 

Once in the street, she discovered, with a start of 
consternation, that she had forgotten her veil, hes¬ 
itated a moment, half minded to return and borrow 




THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


35 


one, and then pulled herself together, determined 
to face the thing out and conquer her morbid sen¬ 
sitiveness at a blow, but her flushed cheeks and 
panic-bright eyes attracted even more attention 
than she had bargained for. Hardly anyone 
passed her without a glance, a few turned their 
heads to look again, and the beautiful Mrs. Lovatt, 
who had always taken notice as a matter of course, 
winced under their interest like an escaping crim¬ 
inal. Resolutely she lowered her eyes to the pave¬ 
ment, and kept them there, with the immediate 
result that she ran into Anthony at the corner of 
Brook Street, and stood warding him off with tight- 
clenched hands, the instinctive words of apology 
frozen on her lips. Anthony was the first to find 
his tongue. 

“Jan!” 

“Oh, you are going to know me then?” 

“I must speak to you somewhere. Oh, not in 
the street. Can’t you-” 

“No,” flashed Jan. “You offered me money to 
keep away from you, and I’ll do it for nothing. 
I’ve finished with that.” 

She eluded him, but her quick swerve brought 
her up against two girls who were walking arm 
in arm, in time to see the gleam of suddenly 



36 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 

awakened interest and to hear the whisper of her 
name. 

Jan pulled up sharply, breathing very fast 
through parted lips, the clear colour in her cheeks 
a flag of defiance that came and went, her eyes, 
turned to her husband, sparkling like hoar-frost. 

“Well, you saw that?” 

“No. What was it?” 

“Oh, nothing.” Jan turned on her heel and 
swung down the street, speaking over her shoulder 
in a fierce undertone. “If you want to walk with 
me you can. I see that I am—not in a position to 
attract attention by running away from you, and 
you see it too. Well?” 

Anthony winced, but fell into step beside her, 
and for a couple of hundred yards they walked in 
silence, their eyes carefully avoiding each other. 

“Won’t you tell me your plans, Jan? I think I 
have a right to know them.” 

“Why?” 

“I’m still responsible for you in a way. You 
refused to take an allowance from me. Does that 
mean that you are provided for in other ways?” 

“It’s not your business,” flamed Jan. 

“I think that it is. Are you—have you—” 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


37 


Anthony stared fixedly in front of him. “Do you 
think of re-marrying soon?” 

“I said that was not your affair. It isn’t. I 
don’t choose to tell you, and for the moment I 
hardly see how you can make me. Wait and see, 
as Mr. Asquith says.” 

“You are making things very difficult for me, 
Jan. I don’t think you understand what I mean. 
It isn’t that I want to know any details of your 
private arrangements, or that I suppose they would 
give me any pleasure if you told me; but I must 
know that you have a settled income of some sort. 
You may need it some day, and we don’t want to 
have to rake all this up again. If you are going 
back to your people that’s enough, of course. Are 
you?” 

“No,” said Jan shortly, and then, desperate that 
he should read in the avowal that she had been 
refused admittance, “Why won’t you let me alone? 
Are you afraid that I shall be a drain on you in the 
future? I will sign an undertaking never to bother 
you for money if you like. Is that it?” 

There was a silence, and then Anthony said 
slowly, “You only said that to hurt, Jan. You 
don’t really believe it.” 


38 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Don’t I? Well, are you to have the monopoly 
of statements which you don’t believe in? I sup¬ 
pose that what you really want is to be declared 
free of all responsibility. You are, free as the 
air. I didn’t fight that divorce suit to keep my 
bread and butter. As far as that was concerned 
you could have got rid of me by simply inviting me 
to walk out of your house while there were still 
some rags of reputation adhering to me; but I sup¬ 
pose that would not have been enough.” 

“No. That would not have been enough.” 

For a time they walked in silence, then Jan 
started from her resentful brooding to follow a new 
train of thought. 

“If we had had a child I suppose you would 
have taken it away from me?” Then, as he made 
no answer. “Would you?” 

“Yes—no—I think so. What is the good of go¬ 
ing into that now?” 

“There is none,” said Jan through set teeth, 
“except to thank God that He didn’t give me one.” 

The lack had been a grievance unacknowledged, 
but vaguely felt through the whole of their married 
life. About a week after their marriage Anthony 
had broached the subject with, for him, unusual 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


39 


abruptness. “I suppose you don’t want any chil¬ 
dren at once, Jan?” and then, at her stammered 
denials, born of unprepared nervousness: “Very 
well, we’ll wait for a year or two. There’s no 
hurry.” 

Jan had regretted her decision in the months that 
followed, but had never keyed herself up to the 
pitch of saying so until the growing breach had 
made it impossible. In a subtle way, her attempts 
to rouse Anthony to jealousy had been dictated by 
that regret, and at the memory of those veiled 
offerings of herself her cheeks tingled anew with 
burning self-disgust, and she pulled up short and 
faced him. 

“Well, you have my word that I won’t bother you. 
I suppose that is what you wanted. Will you go 
now?” 

“I wanted your assurance that you will be 
looked after. I haven’t had it yet.” 

A slow drizzle had begun to fall, thinning out the 
strolling crowd of shop-goers, and for a moment 
they were left on the strip of slippery pavement 
facing each other, unspied upon, Jan erect and de¬ 
fiant, Anthony rigid and obstinate. 

“It isn’t your business,” reiterated Jan for 


40 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


the third time. Thumbscrews would not have 
driven her into admitting her destitution to the 
cause of it, much less the charge of becoming 
monotonous. 

“I undertook to provide for you,” Anthony in¬ 
sisted stubbornly. “That still holds good. It 
isn’t fair of you to handicap me like this. You 
may make your own terms for a settlement, but you 
must have one from somebody. I insist on that. 
You know perfectly well that I can afford it. 
Have I ever grudged you money? You must know 
that people who live, as I suppose you intend to 
live, may be left penniless to face—almost any¬ 
thing. And even if you are going to try-” 

“That’s enough!” cried Jan, scarlet to the roots 
of her hair. She tore off her glove and wrestled 
furiously with the wedding-ring, which in three 
years of wear had made itself a groove in her 
finger, wrenched and pulled it off, heedless of the 
reddened, angry flesh. 

“There! Take it and go! I’m finished with it, 
and every damned thing it represents. Take it, 
I say!” 

She held it out with trembling fingers, pressing it 
upon him furiously, but Anthony, glancing at it 
obliquely, thrust his hands into his pockets. 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 41 

“I don’t want the thing. Keep it, or throw it 
into the gutter. It isn’t mine.” 

“The gutter!” 

For a moment Jan stared at him, aghast, and 
then deliberately adopted the suggestion. 

The drizzle had increased to a downpour, and 
the gutter was aflood with a muddy torrent, which 
carried the ring, glittering and clinking as it rolled 
in its course over and over along the edge of the 
streaming pavement; and Jan, heedless of her sur¬ 
roundings, stood with the rain soaking her 
shoulders, watching its path with a tumult of in¬ 
articulate despair; saw its danger and stooped to 
retrieve it, then straightened empty-handed in pas¬ 
sionate pride to watch it carried through the bars of 
the grating, and heard Anthony laugh harshly as it 
vanished with a splash into the muddy ooze be¬ 
neath. 

“How appropriate, Jan! I should never have 
thought of that.” 

“Damn you!” said Jan, with concentrated 
venom, and flung away from him. 


CHAPTER IV 


“You ought to be working, Felix,” said his aunt. 

“So I am,” was the lazy response, “in my head. 
You’re a materialist, Aunt Anne. All you see is 
my gross, recumbent body, and you assume, be¬ 
cause there is so much of it, that that is all there is 
of me, whereas— Why aren’t you in Cannes, by 
the way?” 

“I shall be next week.” Mrs. Dennison, who 
was prowling about the room in search of cigar¬ 
ettes, turned and eyed her prostrate nephew with 
disfavour. “You fat lump of a boy or man, 
whichever you call yourself, why don’t you get up 
and help me find-” 

“Because I needn’t, of course. I have them 
here at my elbow, as you would see if only you 
cared to look. And as for your insulting reflection, 
one ceases to be a boy at thirty.” 

“Thirty? Are you really that?” Mrs. Denni¬ 
son paused beside him, staring down, her fine 
grey brows contracted. “It’s high time you mar¬ 
ried, my dear.” 

“Don’t beat about the bush, Aunt Anne. It 
42 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


43 


isn’t like you, and I so admire all that is like you.” 

“Why didn’t you marry Jan Lovatt?” his aunt 
questioned straightly, and plumped herself down 
in a chair, prepared to argue the point. For a 
moment Felix merely stared at her without reply, 
then he slowly removed his hands from under his 
head and sat up, straightened his coat. 

“My dear aunt, you don’t seriously imagine that 
I didn’t ask her?” 

“I hoped you had,” said Mrs. Dennison grimly. 
“I wanted to be sure. Why wouldn’t she have 
you?” 

“For an entirely mid-Victorian reason. She 
loves me not.” 

“Urn!” said Mrs. Dennison, and bit a lean fore¬ 
finger. “That is a reason for some people. Do 
you know where she is now?” 

“Do you?” 

“Naturally. I went to the trouble of finding 
out. She is working in a beauty parlour off 
Jermyn Street—one of those places where vain old 
women go to be made young and beautiful. Even 
the management haven’t the brazenness to inform 
their clients that Jan was ever old, but they main¬ 
tain that she came to them ugly.” 

“Does anyone swallow that?” 


44 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“My dear, a plain woman who hopes to be 
beautiful will swallow anything.” 

“I see. And how did you come by this infor¬ 
mation?” 

“It is nice of you not to assume that I came by it 
in the quest of a new chin.” 

“Did you?” 

“Not at all. I decided that Jan was not to be left 
to her own devices in London, so I took steps to dis¬ 
cover what had become of her. It was quite easy. 
I guessed that she was too fond of that scapegrace 
family of hers to lose touch with them altogether.” 

“Mollie told you, of course.” 

“Of course. I understand that they still cor¬ 
respond regularly; though, with a wonderful sense 
of justice, they have shut their poor little erring 
sheep out of the fold, while they continue to enjoy 
the fleece. There’s not one of them who doesn’t 
simply bristle with Jan’s presents, and who 
wouldn’t bristle again if ever she marries another 
millionaire. Oh, perhaps I should except that 
Scotch mother, with her kirk-bound imagination and 
whalebone morals—a lot of good they will ever do 
to anybody if she couldn’t teach her own daughter 
to keep out of hot water!” 

Mrs. Dennison paused to wrench viciously at her 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 45 

gloves, her eyes snapping vindictively, and Felix 
regarded her thoughtfully. 

“Is that what you said to Jan, I wonder?” 

“I said nothing whatever to your Jan,” said 
Mrs. Dennison crisply. “I couldn’t. She looked 
too much like a child who had been beaten for 
making mud pies in a clean pinafore. If the 
Lord had seen fit to give me children—well, I 
suppose they would have resembled George, so it is 
perhaps as well that He didn’t. If girls would only 
consider what fathers they were about to inflict 
upon their unborn children— I; didn’t, but no 
matter.” 

She closed her lips with a snap, and stared at her 
crossed knees with a portentous frown, then 
dropped her half-finished cigarette into the ash-tray 
and rose to her feet. 

“Well, there you have it,” she announced 
drearily. Something of her usual vitality was 
lacking from the sharp brown face. “I have done 
what I could to help—which was nothing. I am 
old. That is the trouble. Old and out of it. 
What has crabbed age to do with youth? Between 
them is a great gulf fixed. What are old people 
for except to laugh at their own pointless jokes, 
and nod their venerable heads over such sins as 


46 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


they have not had time to commit? I am going to 
Cannes. I shall sit in the sun and pretend that I 
am necessary to somebody’s happiness, and prob¬ 
ably, after a time, I shall believe it.” 

“Believe it now,” Felix suggested, and put an 
arm round her. He would have proceeded further 
in comfort, but she stiffened suddenly and leaned 
towards the window. 

“My eyes are not what they were,” said Mrs. 
Dennison. “There is a poster out there for the 
Evening something or other. Can you read it?” 

“Oh, damn!” said Felix hotly. “Why can’t 
they leave the poor child alone?” 

The poster ran briefly: “Jan Lovatt in Jermyn 
Street.” 


CHAPTER V 


Felix was occasionally despised by the tempera¬ 
mental as stupid. This was an error. He was 
merely a contented man. His profession of con¬ 
sulting engineer brought him in as much money 
as he had any very pressing need of, and he had 
few ties and practically no cares, the latter free¬ 
dom being more a question of temperament than 
of anything else. His recipe for complete well¬ 
being—“A good cook and an easy chair”—had 
met with some support. In any case, Felix had 
them both, and was likely to keep them. Baily, 
the good cook, had been in his service for a trifle 
over four years, and had acquired, presumably by 
absorption, a large share of his master’s placidity. 
He was as comfortable as the flat, and as solidly 
respectable as the Bank of England. 

When, towards the close of a chill October day, 
Jan came running up the steps and rang the bell 
with the quick jerk of barely mustered courage, he 
greeted her with a smile which was serenely benign, 
in spite of the fact that the Lovatt trial had been 

a shock to his sensibilities. 

47 


48 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Mr. Royd is out for the moment, Mrs. Lovatt,” 
he told her regretfully. “I am expecting him back 
to dinner, if you will come in.” 

“I’ll wait,” Jan told him briefly, and followed 
him into the sitting-room, where the fire burned 
with a cosy redness oddly reminiscent of Felix 
himself. Felix impressed himself upon his sur¬ 
roundings. One sighed in relapsing into his deep 
chairs, held out one’s hands to his fires, smiled 
up into his face. 

“No. I’ve had tea, thank you,” said Jan, in 
answer to a murmured enquiry from the window, 
where Raily was drawing the soft, thick cur¬ 
tains. 

The lights above her head were hooded with 
large orange shades appliqued with black velvet 
owls. There was abundance of light, but all of it 
warm-tinted radiance that inclined the soul to bask. 
The back of all the chairs sloped inwards on reach¬ 
ing the seat, and it was impossible to do anything 
but recline in them. Jan reclined accordingly, and 
her mind wandered until suddenly caught and held 
by her own portrait, challenging observation in the 
place of honour over the fireplace, “With love, 
Jan” scrawled across the corner in her bold, up¬ 
right handwriting. For a moment she stared at it. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


49 


How utterly mad to have written that! How ut¬ 
terly reckless to keep it here, exposed to the public 
eye! Then, with a hot flush, she remembered 
that everyone knew of its existence. It had been 
produced in court, reproduced in the newspapers, 
characterised by the prosecution as “a piece of 
unblushing effrontery.” Jan wondered drearily 
how they had got hold of it at all, and why, once 
they had got hold of it, Felix had gone to the trouble 
of retrieving it; then realised with a little tremulous 
smile that he wore it as a gage; with a twinkle 
of humour maybe, but, since she had given it, and 
others had challenged his right to its possession, 
flaunted it on his mantelpiece in much the same 
spirit as a knightly favour. “And I would fain 
see the man who shall find himself aggrieved at 
this glove!” 

“I will be a good wife to him!” Jan whispered 
desperately to the flickers in the fire. “I will! 
I will!” 

“You can’t!” the flames spat back at her. “Two 
months ago you said it was impossible. What has 
happened since to make you change your mind?” 

“Be quiet!” said Jan. 

She curled herself up on the hearthrug and pelted 
the fire with little chips of coal, choosing for pref- 


50 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


erence hard, bright fragments which looked as if 
they would hurt. 

The hearth was very wide, tiled in a shade of 
warm red-brown and chestnut, the fender raised 
at the sides and cushioned in untanned leather. 
When they were married they would sit here, one 
on either side of the hearth, and play at Darby and 
Joan. Jan, her frivolity beaten out of her, felt a 
sudden longing for domesticity. Oh, comfortable, 
comfortable Felix! Why had she fought against 
him for these months? Why had she objected 
to his only loving her in “a reasonable sort of 
way?” That was ideal. Safety, comfort, rest; 
that was enough to ask of any man in all conscience. 
Why was he so long? She was anxious to get over 
the first execrable moments of avowal, and be 
taken back into the quiet haven of rest and com¬ 
panionship. She had stayed away too long for the 
sake of an idiotic scruple. What was the use of it 
when, with the exception of Felix, there was not a 
man or woman living who believed that she had any 
longer a claim to their respect? As his wife she 
would, at least, be freed from any outward mani¬ 
festations of contempt. Felix was not the man to 
be content with merely passive protection; nor 
was he the man to ignore the more obvious, 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 51 

material part of their bargain. Jan winced a little, 
picturing that, then drew herself together with a 
jerk. Felix would be giving much—everything. 
It was something to have a commodity with which 
to square the bargain. 

“After all,” said Jan in self-defence, “I am a 
lovely little devil.” 

She rose as if to satisfy herself on the point, 
propped her elbows on the mantelpiece, and studied 
her small, pale face in the glass. A sleepless night 
had ringed her eyes with purple, and even the 
smooth cheeks showed white and pinched. There 
was less colour in the challenging mouth, a desper¬ 
ate compression instead of the usual soft curves, 
hinting at an agony of fear behind the set defiance. 

“What is the matter with you, little idiot?” 
said Jan fiercely. “There is nothing whatever to 
be afraid of, and I never in my life saw you look 
so plain. Oh, why doesn’t Felix come!” 

She turned away, and then whirled back again 
for another few words with the mirror: 

“Where is your brazen effrontery? What is the 
use of it if it isn’t going to help you over times like 
this? Don’t you belong to yourself, to sell, trade, 
or barter, or to do any damn thing you please with? 
What if you are going to do a little disgraceful 


52 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


bargaining? Haven’t you been driven to it by 
the very respectable people who draw their clothes 
away from you? Haven’t you been assured that 
this is the only way left for you to live? Wouldn’t 
the same respectable people have you in the police- 
court if you attempted to solve the problem by not 
living? Well, then! And Felix can look after 
himself. No, he can’t. Felix has been imposed 
on and taken advantage of all his life. If anyone 
has a lame horse, or a car that won’t go, or a house 
with no drains, or a picture by a cubist whom 
nobody has heard of, or furniture which isn’t really 
antique, or silver which isn’t genuine, don’t they 
at once seek out Felix and sell it to him? Isn’t 
he bound to be victimised by the first adventuress 
who tries to make him pity her? Oh, what are 
you doing, you white-faced little parasite, you 
hopeless little rotter? And he called you a valiant 
little gentleman.” 

Ten minutes later Felix entered the room, to 
find her still standing there, her face hidden in her 
hands; but at the sound of his step she raised it, 
and turned to meet him, her eyes dilated and 
almost black in the white-rose face lifted to his. 

“I came—” she whispered, and faltered over it. 
“I came to ask you to—to marry me, Felix, if 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 53 

you will—that is, if you still want to. Oh, please 
tell me if you don’t!” 

“I do,” said Felix briefly, and swept her off* 
her feet. “Why, what’s the matter, dear?” 

She was trembling violently, her lips pressed 
tight to keep them steady, her whole body rigid 
with the effort to yield. The answer came between 
set teeth, the grey eyes desperately searching his 
face. 

“This—this is the most beastly thing I ever did. 
Are you sure you understand, Felix? I’m rotten 
and a cheat from head to foot. I’ve no reputation. 
I’ll be a disgrace to you all your life. I—I don’t 
love you. I’m horribly afraid that I’m in love with 
another man. I’ve simply come to you to save my 
beastly self, and that is the vilest thing of all.” 

“I know what I’m getting all right. Don’t 
worry about me. I can look after myself.” 

“You can’t,” wailed Jan. “Look at all those 
pictures!” 

“Well, perhaps they are a bit fierce,” Felix 
admitted cheerfully. “I’ll take ’em down if you 
like.” 

“It isn’t that. It’s that they are bad, worthless, 
and you bought them from someone who said they 
were good because you knew he wanted the money; 


54 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


or perhaps he pretended to be honest, as I do, and 
told you straight away that they were bad, and you 
bought them just the same, as he knew you would, 
and as I know you will, and we both of us counted 
on it. Perhaps if we hadn’t we wouldn’t have had 
the courage to tell you at all. God knows! Ugh, 
how I hate myself!” 

“You needn’t,” said Felix calmly. “I told you 
that I knew what I was getting—a young wife, a 
lovely wife, a true wife. Behold, it is enough! 
No Oliver Twists allowed on the premises. There, 
that’s all. Subject’s finished with. Not another 
word.” 

He lifted her into the air, deposited her in an 
arm-chair, tidied her skirts, and settled himself at 
her feet, tilting his red-brown head back against 
her knee. 

“There, Jan. Comfy?” 

“Very. Felix, you are a rest!" 

“That’s all right, then. Now, what have you 
been doing with yourself these last three months? 
Oh, by the way, I saw that article in the paper.” 

“I guessed that you would.” Jan leaned back 
in her chair, staring before her with a heavy de¬ 
spair in her eyes. “Oh, why can’t they leave me 
alone? Haven’t I been punished enough already? 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


55 


I thought I would get away from everybody and 
forget my own name, make a new life for myself. 
And I did—I did. It wasn’t specially useful, and 
it wasn’t very amusing, but it was something” 

“And now it’s impossible, I suppose?” 

“Yes, impossible. All yesterday and the day 
before people were coming continually—to look 
at me, as if I were a show. It isn’t much to ask of 
life, is it, just to be let alone? But I’m fair game 
for anybody who happens to recognise me and 
thinks he can make a guinea out of it. Felix, do 
you think you’ll ever be able to make me feel sane 
and normal again?” 

“Yes; and you’re sane now. So am I; so is 
everybody; only there are nasty little snags in 
people when they get together in crowds. You 
always were rather in the limelight, Jan.” 

“I suppose so. I rather liked it before, but 
now-” 

“Well, they’ve all got your photo, you see, and 
naturally they like to use it twice.” 

“So it will be the same trouble everywhere. 
Last night I was trying to think of a way out. My 
mind went round and round like a mouse in a cage, 
and there wasn’t any way, so this morning I tried 
to drown myself.” 



56 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Jan!” 

She had spoken so calmly that it was a moment 
before he comprehended the meaning of the words. 

“Oh, I wasn’t afraid of the actual dying, but— 
the Thames is so muddy—and so public. When¬ 
ever I got as far as the parapet I thought of the 
police-court, and the staring crowds, and the hoard¬ 
ings, if anybody recognised me—all that over 
again—and I couldn’t find the nerve. Then I 
noticed that a policeman was watching me, and 
presently he came up and asked if I wasn’t Mrs. 
Anthony Lovatt. He had been on duty outside the 
court when I was tried, and he remembered me. 
I said I wasn’t, but I don’t think he believed me. 
He knew what I was going to do, because he said 
that it was his duty to take me in charge, but he 
didn’t want to be hard on anybody who was down 
and out, and so if I would give him my word not 
to do anything foolish he would let it drop. I gave 
it to him and ran away.” 

“To me?” 

“Yes. Not straight. I walked about the streets 
for a little first.” 

“Strictly speaking,” said Felix meditatively, 
“I should have preferred it if you had come to me 
before the Thames, but never mind. Now look 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


57 


here, Jan. Let me have your hands to hold for a 
few minutes, and give me a promise.” 

“What?” 

“Well, mainly the same one as you gave the 
policeman—seriously this time—that, whatever 
happens, you’ll never run off the tracks. Promise 
me, Jan. It’s frightfully important.” 

“But I don’t want to. I like to think that if 
things are—very bad I can always wriggle out.” 

He pinned her at once. 

“There it is, you see. ‘Wriggle out.’ You’re 
too fine for that. You rage, but you don’t wriggle 
and you don’t give up. Your courage is phenom¬ 
enal, Jan, and you have got to live up to it. But 
perhaps I am thinking of myself after all. I can 
stretch my imagination to the point of seeing times 
when the Thames would be the best way out, but 
I can’t see myself regarding it with any equanimity. 
There you have the root of the matter. I’m a 
selfish brute, you see, and I happen to be fond of 
you. If anything of that sort happened I should 
never get it out of my mind. That might be said 
of other people, but it’s myself I’m thinking of, 
you know.” 

“Very well,” said Jan slowly. 

“You promise?” 


58 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“I promise.” 

Felix heaved a sigh of relief and pushed his head 
back against her knee, so that he was smiling his 
thanks straight up into her grey eyes, and stretched 
up a big brown hand to pat her arm in a friendly 
fashion. 

“It’s good to feel that you trust me, Jan. Yes, 
you do, quite a lot, and that’s a good basis to start 
working on. We are going to make a success of 
our times together, see if we don’t. Do you want 
to know our immediate plans, by the way?” 

“I suppose I might as well. What are they?” 

“Well, I’m afraid that, as things are, we can’t 
be married to-day. It’s past six for one thing, 
and, for another, I’m not in the least sure how to 
set about it, beyond the fact that one gets a special 
licence from someone. I’m afraid that it will 
have to be a registrar’s office, but that’s a detail. 
Then for to-night I suggest that we have dinner 
together here, and then I’ll loan you the flat— 
after all, it will be your flat after to-morrow—and 
take myself off to the club. To-morrow morning 
we might do a little shopping. Where do you 
want to spend your honeymoon, Jan?” 

“Honeymoon!” Jan started violently, and 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 59 

stared at him with dilated eyes. “Oh, I—hadn’t 
thought. Need we-” 

“Have a honeymoon? Not unless you like. 
Had you thought of anything beyond the actual 
moment, grey eyes?” 

“Yes.” Jan set her lips resolutely. “I’m not 
making any reservations at all. I—I’m glad you 
think me pretty. That’s all I’ve got to pay with, 
the only part of me that isn’t a cheat. I don’t 
paint, nor even use a lip-stick. There are no 
horrible little discoveries for you to make, like 
hair dye, or false teeth, or spoiled feet. All the 
surface part of me is all right, and I—I’ll do my 
best about the rest. Do you really want a honey¬ 
moon, Felix?” 

“Not specially. What do you think of it your¬ 
self?” 

“I’d rather stay here, I think—that is, if you 
don’t mind. I want to hide somewhere for a little 
while. Not for long. I’ll soon get over it. Do 
you think it very cowardly, Felix?” 

“Well, hardly.” He met her pleading eyes with 
a smile. “At the same time, it’s better to face 
things out if you can. You haven’t done anything 
to be ashamed of. Don’t let the scurrilous little 



60 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


people keep you from leading a normal life. 
That’s paying them too much of an honour. Yes, 
I daresay it’s easy enough to say that, and extremely 
difficult to do it, but I love preaching. It makes 
me feel so comfortably superior while it lasts, and 
you can always preach back, you know.” 

“I don’t feel like it,” said Jan slowly. 

She was silent for a few minutes, interlacing her 
fingers tightly over her knee, then sprang to her 
feet, her head held high, a bright spot of colour 
flaming in either cheek. 

“Very well, we won’t hide—not a day—not an 
hour! I don’t want to any longer. Take me 
somewhere, Felix—to one of the old places where 
there are sure to be hundreds of people we know. 
I don’t suppose they will consent to know us, but 
never mind. Will you send Baily to get my things, 
please? Now, at once, and we’ll go.” 

“Not to-night, Jan.” 

“Yes, to-night. I want you to realise it all 
before it’s too late for you to draw back and tell me 
to go to the devil, where I belong; as I should do 
of my own accord if I had the courage of a water- 
rat. Let me have my own way just this once.” 

“I’m not denying you anything to-night,” said 
Felix gently. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


61 


He rose, slipping a protective arm around the 
frail shoulders, and rumpled her hair affec¬ 
tionately. 

“Jan, do you know the conclusion people may 
jump to if they see us about together just now?” 

“I do,” said Jan steadily. “Well, I suppose 
they think something of the sort already, don’t 
they? If we are to live a normal life let’s begin at 
once.” 

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Felix admitted 
reluctantly. “Well, after to-morrow everyone will 
know that it’s all right, so it can’t make so very 
much difference.” 

He was inclined to wish that he had maintained 
his objection when, an hour later, he ushered Jan 
into one of their favourite haunts, and saw a ripple 
of curiosity run over the tables like the wind over 
a cornfield; a sudden vista of twisting shoulders as 
their owners turned their heads towards the door; 
widened eyes, journalistic in their sharpness; here 
and there a solitary diner, restrained by some 
remaining precept of good manners, staring fixedly 
at the plate before him, but, from the majority, an 
intent and shameless stare. It was early yet, and 
half the tables were empty, but the more secluded 
had been pounced upon even earlier. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


62 

Ui 

“I don’t care,” said Jan, instantly interpreting 
his thought. “I came here to be seen. Let them 
stare at me. After all, I suppose they will have to 
stop some time, if only to eat.” 

She dropped the cloak from her shoulders, the 
battle signals flaunting hotly in her smooth cheeks, 
and deliberately eyed the surrounding faces, giving 
back stare for stare. Here and there someone 
endeavoured to catch her eye, but Jan acknowl¬ 
edged none. She sat erect, her chin at an angle, 
crumbling her bread with unsteady fingers, then 
looked at Felix quickly with a little half-laugh. 

“How much of this can you stand, my dear?” 

“As much as you can.” 

“Sure? Not for just to-day and to-morrow, but 
for ever and ever, world without end, amen? 
There’s still time for you to turn me down, you 
know, and it’s kinder to do it really, unless you are 
sure, dead sure, that you can—endure to the end.” 

“If it was going to be as bad as you think, I 
could,” said Felix firmly, “but it won’t be. Give 
them a year to get hold of another scandal, and we 
shall be able to go about as if we were nobodies. 
That’s a generous estimate, too. It won’t be a 
year. Memories are short, thank the Lord!” 

“I don’t think mine is.” 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


63 


“Don’t be morbid, my dear. Wait till you’ve 
really done something that it is gall and wormwood 
to remember.” 

“Well, what am I doing now, though I swore 
two months ago that I’d never do it? That’s the 
pressure of public opinion, I suppose—a sort of 
faith-healing, only worked the other way round. 
Everybody thinks I’m a rotter, so I straightway 
embark upon a rotten thing like this. Oh, I’m 
sorry, Felix. I know you hate me to talk like that, 
but, in a funny sort of way, it eases my conscience 
to call myself a beast. A conscience is a selfish, 
useless possession when one comes to think of it. 
To hell with it—no, to heaven. We need not 
journey in company.” 

She lifted her wine-glass and sipped, her eyes 
glowing like jewels above the rim. 

“What are you thinking about, Felix?” 

“That you are one of the loveliest things I’ve 
ever seen. Oh, I know that’s crude,” he added 
composedly, as Jan made a grimace at him. “My 
dear, you asked me to tell you what I thought, not 
to wrap you up a compliment and throw it across 
the table like a bonbon. Honestly, Jan, half the 
people here are staring at you because they know 
who you are, and the other half because they don’t 


64 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


and wish they did. You can’t help being notice¬ 
able, you see. It isn’t entirely the little Press para¬ 
graphs that have done the mischief. It’s Nature 
who made you what you are.” 

“And married me to Tony.” 

“Well, perhaps his money may have had some¬ 
thing to do with it. It covered you with cloth of 
gold, and turned you from a pixie into a queen 
regnant. You have an air of walking on red 
carpets and bowing at suitable intervals. Confess, 
Jan, you were rather fed up with adulation when we 
first met, and you looked upon me as a change. 
Oh, I admire you, of course, but not-” 

“Not on your bended knees?” 

“No, more like this.” 

He slid out his hand across the table cloth, and 
after a moment she gripped it, wringing it furiously 
with small hot fingers. 

“There. That’s better, isn’t it?” 

“Lots better, Felix. There’s no one on earth I 
like and trust as I do you. That’s such a comfort 
to think about. You—you will beat me, won’t 
you, if I disappoint you badly?” 

“Rather not. If I hit you, you’d break. I shall 
probably pull your hair, though, and perhaps stick 
my fingers in your eyes. I say, Jan, do you mind 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 65 

looking at your plate for a couple of minutes.” 

Why?” said Jan, and, with the immediate 
contrariness of human nature, raised her eyes, and 
looked across to the entrance, crowded now with the 
main body of supper-hunters. There was no need 
to repeat her question. 

“But I thought he was abroad,” said Jan, with 
stiff lips. 

“So he was. He is now, presumably, back; but 
of course that needn’t affect us to any great extent. 
There is plenty of room in London for the three of 
us. I didn’t want you to see him if it could be 
helped, but that doesn’t matter, of course. You 
don’t mind, do you?” 

“Not much,” said Jan uncertainly. “Felix, can 
we go soon! I don’t want any more to eat, 
and-” 

“And our table is in request,” said Felix good- 
naturedly, and beckoned a waiter. “Don’t stand 
up yet, Jan. Wait till they get settled at their 
table if you want to avoid observation.” 

“Very well,” said Jan tonelessly. 

She might have told him that any precautions 
were a waste of time, for across the sea of tables 
which separated her from Anthony their eyes had 
already met. His passed on to find her companion, 



66 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


then returned to her filled with a dreadful compre¬ 
hension, and suddenly and overwhelmingly she 
was sick of the room, with its glaring, revealing 
lights, and its chattering, staring people. She 
pushed back her chair and rose, feeling blindly for 
her cloak, and as Felix moved to drop it over her 
satin-smooth shoulders she winced away from him. 
Above everything rose the necessity to get away 
and hide like a hunted animal. They passed be¬ 
tween the crowded tables like ghosts, and were out 
in the night air again, picking their way delicately 
over the wet pavements by the hard pools of arti¬ 
ficial light. They found a taxi at the foot of 
Shaftesbury Avenue, and relapsed into it with a 
sigh of relief. 

“Tired, Jan?” 

“A little. That was a mistake. And yet I don’t 
know. It taught me something.” 

She turned her head restlessly on the cushion, 
and stared out at the moving shadows of the streets. 

“After all, we agreed that everyone might think 
that if they chose.” 

“Only Lovatt isn’t ‘everyone’?” Felix suggested 
gently. 

“No. Not that I care a damn what he thinks. 
Oh, it isn’t fair to lie to you to-night. I do care. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


67 


I care horribly. But I suppose there will come a 
time when I don’t.” 

“Of course there will,” said Felix consolingly. 
The darkness hid his expression, but there was a 
new intonation in his voice which made Jan turn 
to him quickly, her wide eyes striving to pierce the 
shadows. 

“Felix, you’re hating this?” 

“I’m not. Here we are. I won’t come in to¬ 
night, Jan.” 

“Why not?” said Jan dully. “It’s your flat.” 

Then with a jerk she shrugged off her turgid 
mood and got to her feet. 

“Good-night, Felix. I’m sorry I’ve been such a 
beast.” 

“My dear,” said Felix gravely, “I like and ad¬ 
mire you, and I firmly believe you to be the 
straightest of living women. What beastliness 
there is in proving that you trust me I cannot im¬ 
agine.” 

He kissed her lightly, and turned away to the 
taxi as Jan ran up the steps of the flat. Twelve 
was striking as she dropped her cloak on the carpet 
and pushed open the door of the bedroom. The 
shaded lights blinked softly on the brass knobs of 
the bedstead and the ordered array of handleless 


68 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


brushes. “How uncomfortable he will be to¬ 
morrow!” thought Jan’s subconscious mind. As 
she walked across to the dressing-table she came 
face to face with her own reflection for the second 
time that day, and stared at it with the deepest 
disgust. 

“You would have let him do it,” she whispered 
fiercely. “You would actually have let him marry 
you, you damned cheat!” 

She struck the reflection across the face with her 
open palm. 


CHAPTER VI 


Otway is a little village on the south coast, and 
half a dozen people make a habit of going there 
yearly to fish. Beyond that it has few visitors. 
There is a tiny inn, which calls itself an hotel, 
and a cluster of cottages for the permanent popula¬ 
tion, who are poor, but not very poor. Practically 
everybody keeps chickens, and nobody buys eggs. 
It is an ideal place to go to if one desires to live 
the simple life. 

The farthest house of the village has lost itself 
altogether, and wandered up a footpath almost into 
the next cove. It is a larger cottage than the 
majority, and the landlord, aware of this, and 
finding a difficulty in letting it, has divided it into 
two. The larger half is, or was, let to a “writing 
lady,” regarded with awe, not untinctured with 
scorn, by the more practical population, and left 
severely alone as a modern practiser of the black 
arts and a worker of mysteries. 

Monica Stuart was a tall, long-limbed girl of five 
and twenty, her face very broad at the fine 
69 


70 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


forehead, dwindling abruptly to a small, sharp 
chin, her nose, rather too long, was inclined to be 
sharp also, except at the tip, which was blunted 
into a knob in the unexpected manner so common 
in Saxon noses. Her eyes, very wide apart and 
straight-looking, were calm as the evening star and 
cool as wet violets, and her cold, crisp voice was 
a delight to the ear. 

You see her first in a faded overall cut square to 
the neck and falling straight, unbelted, to just 
above her ankles, which are shapely. It is marked 
about the cuffs and yoke by dabs and splashes of 
ink, where she has used it to clean the tip of her 
pen, and her patch pockets are stained also, and 
torn a little, hanging outwards. 

Monica had first come to Otway in the ordinary 
manner, as a summer visitor, breaking fresh ground 
in the way of seaside retreats, had cocked an ironic 
eye at the village and an adoring one at the splen¬ 
dour of sea and cloud, and announced that the air 
which did such wonders to other people’s chickens 
must be the very thing for the development of her 
Soul. Incidentally, she spoke of her soul with a 
capital “S,” made fun of it in public, and wor¬ 
shipped it in private. She stayed. 

Thus Jan, knocking at the door of the cliff cot- 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


71 


tage, found it opened to her by a lanky, grave¬ 
faced girl, who eyed her with frank curiosity, and 
then with franker concern. 

“Good Lord, how wet you are! Come in and 
dry!” 

“I don’t mind rain,” said Jan, and shook the 
drops from her hat, where they were collecting in 
preparation to descend in a minature waterspout. 
“I really came for the key of the next cottage. 
I understood that you had it. You are-” 

“Oh, yes, I’m Monica Stuart. Are we going to 
be neighbours? How nice! But you can’t look 
over the place in that state. Do take off that hat 
and dump it in front of the fire. I was just going to 
have tea, anyway. There’s nothing to eat—there 
never is—but there’s heaps to drink. Do stay.” 

“Shan’t I be disturbing you?” 

“You’ll be disturbing my heroine,” said Monica 
grimly. “I don’t care. She’s such a stick of a 
girl, and she talks and talks. If she would only 
shut up for a moment and give the hero a chance 
I might get somewhere, but at present there isn’t 
an earthly chance of it!” 

Jan laughed sympathetically, and drew the only 
other chair close to the fire. November was well 
advanced, and the biting sea wind had chilled her 



72 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


to the bone. As she drew off her wet gloves and 
held a small blue hand to the fire she shivered 
slightly, and hunched her shoulders about her ears. 

“They told me in the village that you wrote. 
You seem to be regarded as rather a curiosity, you 
know.” 

“I write books that nobody ever reads,” Monica 
admitted. “Of course, I have never had one pub¬ 
lished. That may be the reason. I don’t know 
that I blame the publishers, either. It is not their 
fault that they are born without a sense of discrim¬ 
ination. I say, you do look frozen. I hope you 
haven’t caught your death of cold.” 

“I hope so, too. Does it always rain here?” 

“Well, it rained yesterday and the day before. 
As a general rule I should say it did, except when 
it snows. Please don’t let that put you off. It’s 
quite a nice place really.” 

“Put me off?” 

“Well, you’re going to stay here, aren’t you?” 

“I’m not sure,” said Jan, her eyes on the fire. 
“I may not be able to. It depends on—circum¬ 
stances.” 

“I hope you can,” said Monica warmly. 
“You’ve no idea how lonely it is.” 

She had cleared the ruck of papers from the 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


73 


table, and was cutting brown bread and butter, her 
head, fuzzy as that of a Fiji islander, bent above 
the loaf, and presently Jan turned her eyes from 
the coals to watch her with a kind of hungry wist¬ 
fulness which had grown on her during the past 
months. Jan was naturally gregarious, and the 
complete isolation from companionship had told 
on her more than even she was aware. 

“Why, I haven’t spoken to a friend for weeks,” 
she said impulsively, and instantly regretted her 
indiscretion; but Monica was not observant, or, 
apparently, suspicious. She merely raised eyes of 
honest astonishment and paused for a moment in 
her work of cutting. 

“Good heavens! Where have you been living?” 

“In London.” 

“Oh, that explains it,” said Monica, with a 
worldly-wise nod. “London is the most God¬ 
forsaken spot on this earth, unless you happen to 
live in the suburbs, which God forbid. There, 
tea’s ready.” 

As she moved to the table Jan eyed the kitchen 
with interest and some admiration. The walls 
were hand distempered, and decorated with a frieze 
of dancing skeletons. Monica explained in the 
interval of munching bread and butter that she 


74 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


had done them herself, and that most of the un¬ 
framed sketches tacked to the wall, haphazard, 
were her own also. She leaned to pen-and-ink 
work, and found her subjects in scrawny damsels 
writhing in the toils of scaly but otherwise in¬ 
offensive dragons, or riding tempestuous waves in 
every conceivable attitude of vigorous abandon. 
There were one or two seascapes, done entirely with 
the brush, and decorated on either the near or far 
horizon with a red and flaming sun and a flock of 
seagulls. Short curtains in a large check decorated 
the small-paned windows. The floorboards were 
stained rather unevenly, and covered at intervals 
with Japanese grass mats in varying stages of 
repair. 

“I started to make a carpet once,” Monica ex¬ 
plained, “but it took so long that I gave it up. 
Besides, it was so dull and easy. I hate doing 
things that anybody can do. It is such a waste of 
time. It’s like owning that one is no better than 
anybody else. That may be true, but why own it? 
I instinctively distrust people who assure me that 
they are no better than their neighbours. It in¬ 
variably means that they are worse. No one is 
as good as they think they are, so it is as well to 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


75 


think strenuously, and catch up when you can.” 

“Is the other half of the cottage anything like 
this?” said Jan curiously, seizing the first oppor¬ 
tunity to slip in a question. 

“Well, it isn’t quite so nice,” Monica admitted 
frankly. “You see, I have what used to be the 
sitting-room and the best bedroom. I put in this 
stove and a bathroom. It’s the only private bath¬ 
room in Otway. I’ll lend it to you if you like. 
We have to share the garden, too. There was a 
honeysuckle and a columbine in it last year. I’ll 
have the honeysuckle, and you can have the colum¬ 
bine if it comes up. We drink rainwater mainly. 
It’s in a tank under the garden, and you have to 
pump up what you want every morning. It’s a 
beastly job. We’ll do it on alternate days. Now, 
will you come and see your half?” 

She led the way, and Jan followed, lamblike, 
dazed by the quick, continuous flood of directions. 
Monica was guide, philosopher, and friend in vol¬ 
uble triumvirate as she opened the second door of 
the cottage with a flourish, thrust Jan in out of the 
rain, and followed herself, neatly avoiding the drips 
from the leaky rainwater pipe above the door. 

The room they entered was small and dark 


76 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


in the wintry twilight, cheerless as uninhabited, 
uncared-for rooms are bound to be. Monica in¬ 
troduced it with a gesture. 

“There is no passage, you see. There was, but 
they did away with it when they divided the place. 
That makes it the very devil for draughts, but 
otherwise I don’t know that you miss it. It was 
probably too narrow for a Christian, and the very 
haven of rest for earwigs. You would have to do 
up this room a little. I’ll distemper it for you. 
Painting woodwork is easy, if you know how much 
oil to use with the paint. I do. It won’t be so 
dark when the window is cleaned. That stove is 
made to light, little as it looks like it. I tried one 
day to see. Whether it cooks or not I couldn’t say. 
Do you mind cockroaches? I think that there are 
some about. If you give them Keatings in small 
doses they usually die. Some don’t, but that’s 
fate. Are you wondering how one gets to the next 
floor? The stairs are in the cupboard. I think 
that is to deceive burglars, but it may be to deceive 
the tenant. Again I couldn’t say. The chief ad¬ 
vantage is that you can’t fall down them. There 
isn’t room. Allons! We mount the stairs.” 

The room above was tiny, sloping of roof, and 
diminutive of window, with the additional dis- 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


77 


advantage that a square had been cut out of the 
floor to admit the passage of the stairs, but the 
window, set in the slope of the roof, gave a match¬ 
less vista of sea and rock, and tumbled, thunderous 
clouds seen through a thin grey veil of drifting 
rain. 

Monica threw open the window and the cold, 
salt wind swept in to replace the stagnant musti¬ 
ness, with the clean, sweet smell of the rain. 
Drops, blown inwards, frosted her golliwog hair 
as she turned, her face oddly reverent, and quoted 
softly: 

Charmed magic casements opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 

Their eyes met in quick understanding and spoke 
to each other a moment. Then she laughed and 
nodded cheerfully. 

“So you know that, too. Who doesn’t? But 
we are going to be friends, aren’t we?” 

“No,” said Jan, suddenly grave. 

“Why not? Don’t you—like me?” 

“I could like you a lot too much. That is just 
the trouble. That is why I can’t stay here at all. 
I thought I could till you opened that window, 
but-” 



78 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


She paused a moment, fingering the sash, her 
eyes cast down; then raised them, resolutely 
courageous. 

“Doesn’t my face remind you of anything?” 

Monica shook a puzzled head, her face demand¬ 
ing enlightenment, and Jan went on ruthlessly. 

“My name is Desmond now. It used to be Jan 
Lovatt. Now do you remember?” 

“No. Ought I to?” Monica was aghast. 
“Good heavens, you don’t write too?” 

Jan laughed a little uncontrolled laugh, shook 
her head, and turned away, staring out of the 
window at the tumultuous waves. 

“No, I don’t write. I’ve been written about— 
quite a lot. I’m very famous. My trial was the 
most sensational of the year. My husband di¬ 
vorced me a few months ago—for the usual sordid 
reasons. Now you know.” 

She eyed Monica’s open, unfeigned horror with 
calm detachment, and added dispassionately: 

“Of course, I should have told you that before 
I accepted your food. You wouldn’t have offered 
it if you had known. Thank you, anyway. I 
think I had better go now.” 

“Don’t,” said Monica, with a gasp and a gulp, 
“Come and look at my bathroom.” 


CHAPTER VII 


Monica was a product peculiar to her age, cynical, 
blasee, aloof, and, beneath her crab-like armour of 
sophistication, as utterly and innocently ignorant 
as the most Victorian grandmother could have de¬ 
sired. She had gone out of her way to acquire 
a technical knowledge of the nastiness of life, and 
took some pride in shocking her parents with the 
exhibition of it, but, though of this she was bliss¬ 
fully unaware, she remained as complete a stranger 
to it as a schoolgirl to the French tongue, and her 
attitude towards divorce was a striking example of 
this curious state of mind. In writing, in debating 
societies, and in conversation, she was vehement 
in its defence as a necessary adjunct of modern life. 
Privately, though without acknowledging it even 
to herself, she accepted the teachings of the Bible 
on this point in toto, and would have held it a point 
of honour to fight her way through any matrimonial 
tangle to the bitter end; but her judgments were 
always impulsive. She had taken Jan to her heart 
at sight, recognising a fellow spirit, or perhaps 


80 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


merely caught by the fresh, vivid beauty of face 
and voice. Her instinctive efforts to pin down 
the new-found acquaintance with offers of service 
had sprung from admiration as spontaneous as it 
was fervent, and to be told that she had, to use a 
current phrase, taken a viper to her bosom caused 
the same amazed recoil as if she had really been 
guilty of that short-sighted action. So much for 
the first moment. Then reaction. Squalid ro¬ 
mance and draggle-tailed morality had, she was 
sure of it, no further connection with those eyes. 
Sin? It was a word with no meaning. She held 
out her hand impulsively. 

“Come and look at my bathroom.” 

It was typical of Monica that she made no fur¬ 
ther reference to the matter, dismissing it, even in 
thought, to that world of shadowy unrealities in 
which she had no active curiosity. As to herself, 
she made no reserves. She was the daughter of a 
schoolmaster, had herself carried off honours at 
school, and started life with the handicapping belief 
that she was clever. It was advisable, though not 
absolutely necessary, that she should do something 
for her living, and she had tried a number of things 
with varying success, always hampered by the 
knowledge that she could do something else better. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


81 


She had left writing to the last because her people 
disapproved of it, though she herself believed that 
her whimsical aptitude for the pen would prove 
her salvation. Her father allowed her a hundred a 
year, living was cheap, and she supplemented her 
income by knitting jumpers at fifteen shillings a 
garment. This source of income she revealed to 
Jan, rather suspecting the stringency of the latter’s 
finances. 

“You knit a sample jumper,” she explained, 
“and after that they send you down the silk, and 
pay you for the work as you do it. It isn’t very 
well paid, of course, but it ekes things out. When 
I first came down here I spent my first quarter’s 
allowance in putting in the bathroom, and I couldn’t 
very well write home for more. Daddy is a dear, 
and I know he gives me absolutely all he can 
afford; so I stuffed my unprofitable novels into the 
cupboard and knitted furiously. I was as lean as 
a slum cat before the next quarter-day, but I made 
ends meet somehow. Why don’t you try it?” 

“I can knit,” Jan admitted, frowning. “I don’t 
see why I shouldn’t try, at any rate.” 

Monica foraged for a moment in one of her 
frequent heaps of litter, dragged forth a bulging 
work-bag, and from thence extracted a limp gar- 


82 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


ment of vivid sea green, and held it out at arm’s 
length with much the gesture of one handling a 
dead rat. 

“There’s your sample. Isn’t it fierce?” 

“Do you mean I’m to copy that?” 

“No. Send it in as your work and save time. I 
know it’s all right, because I’ve been working for 
those people for a year. Then, when they send 
you down the silk, you can start straight away.” 

“Is that quite honest?” 

“Why not? They can always say that they 
don’t like your work if they don’t. Anyway, being 
businesslike is doing as many people as you can 
without being found out. I was in the city once 
for a whole year, but I wasn’t much of a success. 
I was always being found out. By the way, how 
are you getting on with my novel?” 

Jan, who had accepted the thankless task of 
reading and criticism, and who had been vainly 
trying to divide her attention between the Monica 
of the clear, incisive voice and the Monica of the 
scribbled foolscap, puckered her brows a moment 
before replying, aware of the delicacy of the task. 

“Your people talk too much,” she decided at 
last. “All the chapters are really a series of 
dialogues. If your heroine is on the stage they’re 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


83 


monologues. You are using yourself for your 
heroine, aren’t you?” 

“Oh, Jan! That hopeless, pedantic prig!” 
Monica broke off, aware of the familiarity. “I’m 
sorry. You never said that I might call you that.” 

“Do. I like it.” 

“Well, anyway, here have I been cursing that 
girl from the first page, and wondering where on 
earth I got her from and you dare to ask me if 
she’s me” 

“Sorry, but she is like you, you know, and a 
long way the most vivid study you’ve done. All 
the women are good, I think, but the men so far 
are rather sticks.” 

“I don’t know any,” Monica confessed, with an 
anxious frown. “I had to make them up out of 
my own head. Isn’t it terrible the way some girls 
are brought up? Except for daddy, and one or 
two others, all old and much married, I’ve hardly 
spoken to a man in my life, and I’m twenty-five. 
I wonder where men go to when they’re young? 
One hardly ever sees them between eighteen—when, 
so far as character goes, they don’t exist—and 
forty-five, when they are simply branded with 
middle age. I believe they hibernate in between 
times, and marry in their sleep. In fact, that ex- 


84 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


plains the type of girls who marry and the type 
who don’t. I have always wondered whether the 
average married woman is fatuous because she is 
married, or was married because she was fatuous, 
or whether it is only fatuous women who allow 
themselves to be married.” 

“The last, I think,” said Jan, with a flickering 
glance at her ringless left hand lying across her 
knee. 

The look did not escape Monica, but she re¬ 
frained from commenting upon it. 

“I loathe the ordinary English married woman!” 
she said vigorously. “As far as I can see, there is 
nothing she does well. She can’t or won’t dress. 
She can’t cook. She knows less than nothing 
about hygiene, and what she does know won’t 
apply. If her house is mismanaged, as it always 
is, she blames the modern servant. Actually she 
knows about as much about housekeeping as the 
average cart-horse. She will regard it as a chance 
affair and not as a science. I don’t blame her so 
much as the system. She’s proud of knowing 
nothing. Read any war novel, and you’ll find that 
the chief reproach we hurl against the German 
woman is that she knows her job. Not that I think 
a woman should be a slave to her house, but our 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


85 


women are , and querulous slaves at that. They are 
slaves to their children, too, and the children bully 
and despise them for it. No one was ever the 
better for any silly self-sacrifice. The atmosphere 
of unselfishness is as enervating as damp heat, and 
more exasperating. The domestic tyrant is a finer 
animal than the domestic martyr. Oh, I tell you 
the incompetent housewives of England are re¬ 
sponsible for a lot! Here endeth the first lesson. 
If you’ll clear the table I’ll cook the lunch.” 

The two had drifted into the habit of lunching 
together on alternate days. It was, said Monica, 
a dispiriting business to cook for oneself, and she 
thought highly of her cooking, not altogether with¬ 
out reason. Jan, whose ignorance in matters do¬ 
mestic was almost complete, had become her pupil, 
and accepted advice and instruction with eager 
gratitude. Her first week at the cliff cottage had 
been an epic struggle with the accumulation of dirt 
on a diet of hard-boiled eggs and bought rolls, but 
Monica, discovering the state of affairs, had 
attacked her with bracing scorn, and initiated her 
into the delights of bread-making. Privately Jan 
thought the trouble involved disproportionate to the 
saving of farthings, but she admitted the charm of 
kneading the dough, dividing and twisting it into 


86 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


shapes, and setting it before a hot fire to heave and 
swell its way into being. She learned, too, the 
mystery of crisp, golden omelettes, which is briefly 
to beat the yolks and whites separately and long, 
and the way to make coffee that was really coffee 
and not pale, coloured fluid, and how to use sand 
for cleaning and scouring. 

As the winter shut down on Otway it was as if 
invisible gates had been set up between the inhabit¬ 
ants and the outer world. Even the motorists who 
occasionly whizzed through the village were held 
up by the state of the roads. A thin, grey film of 
sleet settled over everything, and alternately froze 
hard or melted and dripped muddily. Jan, who 
had never spent a winter on the coast, discovered in 
the grey, storm-racked sea an endless source of 
delight, and neglected her knitting to curl up 
against the grey, frost-starred pane and watch, or 
on warmer days ventured down to the rocks to get 
a nearer vision of the racing white horses. 
Monica, who, as has been said, was graciously 
pleased to approve of the sea, usually accompanied 
her. 

It was returning from one of these expeditions 
that they came upon a party of motorists, who had 
strayed from the beaten track in search of a new 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 87 

sensation, and found it in a breakdown miles from 
anywhere. 

Jan had frozen into recognition, and would have 
passed them without speaking, but was detained, 
and when she rejoined Monica five minutes later 
her sparkling eyes and elevated chin excited the 
latter’s frank curiosity. 

“Friends of yours?” 

“I haven’t any!” said Jan viciously, and her 
mouth set uncompromisingly. Then, aware of 
having been ungracious, she laughed uncertainly. 

“Monica, if God stamped on you, which would 
you prefer, the people who ran away from the 
mess or the ones who crowded closer to look?” 

“The runners,” said Monica, with prompt de¬ 
cision. “I never thought of that before. I won¬ 
der if that is what usually makes charity so in¬ 
sufferable.” 

“Probably. If I invented a new commandment 
it would be: ‘Thou shalt not finger thy neigh¬ 
bour’s soul.’ No one would keep it.” 

“Oh, yes, they would,” said Monica firmly. 
“You’re not so transparent as you think you are. 
At the very worst there will always be a glass case 
between you and the public. By the way, this is 
December, Jan.” 


88 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Do you think I don’t know it?” said Jan, with 
a protracted shiver. “Why, it’s written in the very 
marrow of my bones. Why do you think it nec¬ 
essary to remind me?” 

“Christmas is coming,” Monica announced 
briskly. “I always go home to my people for a 
week or two. What are you thinking of doing?” 

“Nothing. Stay here, I suppose.” 

She stared fixedly at the water as she spoke, 
finding it dreary. The Desmonds had never been 
accustomed to make much of Christmas, but as a 
rule they had spent it together. Jan, the outcast, 
felt a sudden spasm of home-sickness, and bit her 
lip sharply to drive away the desolate ache. 

“Look here!” said Monica, pursuing her own 
train of thought with her customary oblivion to 
cross-currents. “Why can’t you come home with 
me. My people would love to have you. Daddy 
is a dear, so is Frances, and it would be jolly for 
me. Do come!” 

“I’d love to, but of course I can’t.” Jan stared 
at her. “Have you forgotten?” 

“There isn’t anything to forget,” said Monica 
stoutly, “and if there was, I have.” 

“That’s frightfully nice of you.” Jan slipped a 
hand through her arm with an affectionate laugh. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


89 


“But, my dear, do you seriously imagine I would 
accept hospitality from people who don’t know that 
I’m a divorced woman? They don’t, I suppose?” 

“Of course they don’t,” said Monica indig¬ 
nantly. “It isn’t their business.” 

“If I went to their house it would be.” 

“Oh, very well then. I’ll write and tell them if 
you like,” Monica conceded reluctantly. “It 
won’t make any difference, and it’s frightful rot, 
anyway, but I suppose if you say so-” 

“I don’t and you shan’t. I don’t think you 
realise what divorce means, you know, and I’m 
sure I don’t want you to; but your mother will, and 
then I—shall lose a friend, I suppose. I haven’t 
too many.” 

“I wouldn’t drop you for a wilderness of rela¬ 
tions!” said Monica hotly. “Besides, you seem to 
think my people are utter beasts, Jan. They’re 
not!” 

“I daresay, but I don’t suppose they are any 
more tolerant than my own. I’m not allowed 
home, you see.” 

“The unconscionable brutes!” snapped Monica 
vindictively, and Jan regarded her with amuse¬ 
ment. 

“I wonder if I say thank you for that,” she said 



90 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


meditatively. “Well, it’s nice of you, only they 
aren’t, you know. I believe they would have me 
back if they could, but I have sisters—three of 
them—and it wouldn’t be fair to them.” 

“I suppose you think that the existing arrange¬ 
ment is fair to you! Don’t be a hypocrite, Jan! 
Besides, it’s no use telling me that you ever did 
anything which would shock a baby. I should 
call you a liar.” 

“Babies aren’t easily shocked,” said Jan. 


CHAPTER VIII 


A week later Monica departed for her home. 
The suggestion that Jan should accompany her had 
been allowed to lapse, Monica accepting the 
finality of the other’s reasoning; and she made no 
further reference to it until the last moment when 
she was safely packed into the aged trap which was 
to carry her the five miles to the nearest station. 
Then she leaned out for a moment and put her 
hands on Jan’s shoulders. 

“Sure you won’t come with me, dear?” 

“Of course. But I shall be all right down here. 
Don’t worry. Happy Christmas to you!” 

Acting on impulse she raised her lips for 
Monica’s brief, pecking kiss of farewell, and stood 
watching the departure of the creaking trap with 
wistful eyes until the dip in the road hid it from 
sight. Then, feeling that a return to her lonely 
knitting was more than likely to lead to a fit of 
nostalgia she turned towards the cove. 

The tide was far out, leaving an expanse of 
smooth sand bare to the afternoon sun. Towards 
91 


92 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


the mouth of the cove, where a bar of sabre-toothed 
rocks jutted out, nearly closing it, the water lay 
still in broad lakes and channels gleaming faintly 
blue in the reflection of the pallid sky. The sand 
itself was smooth enough, and pleasantly resilient 
to the foot. Jan crossed the half mile or so of the 
beach, picking her way among the network of shal¬ 
low pools and found a seat of tawny seaweed 
partly sheltered from the wind where she could 
curl up for a moment and observe the breakers tum¬ 
bling in across the limestone breastwork. She 
watched them, however, with an absent mind en¬ 
gaged in other problems, for the immediate busi¬ 
ness of living claimed urgent attention. She had 
discovered that by spending every spare moment 
left over from housework in rapid knitting it was 
just possible to make thirty shillings a week. One 
could live on that, especially now that she had 
learned not to waste half her food in cooking it, 
and could leave a small margin over for safety, but 
only a minute one; and piecework has the alarming 
disability of being paid for at irregular intervals. 
Jan, whose ignorance of business methods was pro¬ 
found, had been aghast at the discovery, and had 
flown to prompt and stringent economies. 

“But when do they pay you?” she queried indig- 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 93 

nantly, when driven to speak of her difficulty to 
Monica. 

“When they think they will. You have to send 
in your bill regularly of course. You may have to 
send it in two or three times.” 

“But I hate seeming to dun people.” 

“You have to. Nobody pays bills before they 
must. Most concerns are run on the money they 
owe. Why, free lance journalists and artists don’t 
get paid for months. I know some who are nearly 
always at their wits’ end for money for just that 
reason.” 

“It isn’t very fair.” 

“It isn’t at all fair, but there you are. It’s 
the custom. The piece-worker scores over some 
things; but mostly he has a dog’s life. That ex¬ 
plains the existence of the wage slave. If it 
weren’t safer to be pinned down no one would bare 
their bosoms to the pin.” 

Jan considered this point frowning, reluctantly 
acknowledged it, and altered her budget accord¬ 
ingly. She was shy of discussing money matters, 
and preferred to struggle through alone than apply 
for help as to what could or could not be most 
easily dispensed with; but it was here that Monica’s 
directing hand would have been of most use to her, 


94 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


for she had only the vaguest ideas as to what 
were luxuries and what grim essentials. She cut 
herself down to bread and cheese, and was reck¬ 
lessly extravagant with her laundry, spent a week’s 
income on her shoes and wasted a morning trying 
to mend a leaky tap, which a plumber could have 
settled in five minutes. In the past few weeks she 
had lost something of her smooth roundness of 
cheek, and violet shadows had settled themselves 
beneath her eyes. The glowing scarlet of her 
mouth was less pronounced. 

Her small stock of money was dwindling peril¬ 
ously, and her nights were haunted by petty, but 
terrifying arithmetic, bread at 5d., butter Is. 2d., 
cocoa—Jan detested cocoa, but had been told that 
it was nourishing—8d., and, above all, the lunches 
which she shared with Monica, and which could 
not be economised. 

“It seems such a waste of food to eat it,” said 
Jan, with passionate seriousness. 

In Monica’s absence she decided to eliminate the 
item of a mid-day meal, remembering that she had 
read somewhere that two meals a day were both 
healthful and economical. 

“And Monica will be back in a fortnight,” said 
Jan. “So it can’t kill me anyway.” 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


95 


She rose, stamping her feet, and folded her 
hands closely against the base of her warm throat, 
gazing out over the grey restlessness of the sea. 
She had ceased to be resentful against life, mainly 
because the fire had burnt itself out. Of Anthony 
she resolutely refused to think. Whether he had 
meant much or little in her life, whether he had 
treated her well or ill, he was shut away in the back 
cupboards of her mind, and padlocked in; but the 
life they had lived together was a neutral zone 
where she allowed herself to range at will. The 
Mediterranean and Pluffles. The big Japanese 
umbrella, casting a parti-coloured shadow on the 
sand, where the beautiful Mrs. Lovatt held levee, 
flushed from a reckless exhibition of diving, sleek 
and workmanlike as an otter in her one-piece 
swimming suit, that clothed and revealed her at 
once like a black skin. Jan was a strong swimmer, 
and a quite fearless one. She could never be 
otherwise than conspicuous, but the sea was her 
supreme theatre. Where was Anthony in the pic¬ 
ture? She pondered the question with drawn 
brows, and laughed vexedly. The man had a 
positive genius for self-effacement. Was it natural 
to him, or a carefully cultivated art? She reined 
her thoughts to a standstill, conscious whither they 


96 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


were tending. For the first time in her swift, care¬ 
less life she had leisure for self-analysis and rest¬ 
less questioning, and both were equally useless. 

66 We take things as they come because they 
come,” said Jan, “and afterwards, when we try to 
sort them out, we don’t know how.” 

A wave larger than the rest came tearing land¬ 
ward, and dashed itself with a bubbling roar 
against the very rock on which she was standing, 
and Jan turned towards the shore, clambering over 
the rocks in preference to the smoother going of 
the sand, where the shallow pools were already 
uniting into formidable lakes. Jan was learning a 
respect for shoe leather, but it was slow work pick¬ 
ing her way among the boulders in the waning 
light, and her skirts and ankles were wet enough 
before she reached the dry land, and ran up the 
path to the cottage. 

For the first time in weeks the windows were 
dark and unlighted, mutely reminding her of 
Monica’s absence. The fire, left too long un¬ 
tended, had seized the opportunity to go out. It 
was a cheerless homecoming. 

Jan made a face at herself in the window pane, 
and broke into the “Marseillaise.” 


CHAPTER IX 


“You aren’t looking well,” said Monica severely. 

She had, though she did not say so, cut her holi¬ 
day short, in spite of protestations, for the sake of a 
speedy return to her disconsolate companion. Her 
friendships were few and Jan’s small fingers were 
twisted in her heartstrings more tightly than she 
realised. Something of admiration, something of 
girl and girl freemasonry, but more than all a 
warm protective motherliness went to make up the 
strength and sweetness of their relationship; and it 
was the mother now who surveyed Jan with anxious 
solicitude, and noted the pinched face where the 
bright, unnatural flush came and went with sus¬ 
picious frequency, dyeing even the smooth fore¬ 
head under the square-cut hair. Her eyes appeared 
to have grown abnormally large and luminous, and 
yet to wear a blinded expression as if she had 
looked too long at a bright light. Monica, 
listening to the quick, uneasy breath, guessed 
shrewdly that she should be in bed, but judged it 
impolitic to say so. At her comment, Jan had put 
97 


98 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


up an unsteady hand to push the damp hair off her 
forehead, and regarded her with a puzzled distress 
which was infinitely alarming. 

“I get little black spots before my eyes,” she 
complained listlessly. “It makes it awfully diffi¬ 
cult to knit. I wonder if I ought to see an ocu¬ 
list.” 

“Rot!” said Monica with scornful vigour. 
“You’ve been underfeeding, that’s what’s the mat¬ 
ter with you. I guessed it at once. What have 
you been having to eat while I have been away?” 

“Oh, the usual sort of things.” 

“Cooked food?” 

“Well, it didn’t seem worth while to mess about 
with pots and pans just for myself. I don’t care 
what I eat and it’s too much bother. Don’t scold, 
Monica!” 

She broke off to cough, and Monica, already 
sufficiently warned by the faint hoarse voice with 
its dragging undercurrent of weariness, grew 
solemn as a lead coffin. 

“I won’t bully,” she promised kindly, her eyes 
observant. “But you might try to be a sensible 
little beast. There’s no earthly good in starving 
yourself. Look here, when I first came down here 
I had a mad idea that genius flourished best on 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


99 


bread and cheese. Heaven knows where I’d got 
it from. Not from anyone who had tried it unless 
from a homicidal lunatic. There you are! The 
black spots are bad enough; but wait until you 
come to the white ovals that are always appearing 
under your eyelids when you least expect them! 
There’s no sort of sense in it. You get run down, 
and then you can’t do your work. That’s enough 
for the time being. I’m going to make some 
cocoa.” 

“I don’t want any,” said Jan listlessly. “Oh, 
I didn’t mean to be rude. Of course I’ll drink 
some if you like, only I don’t feel like it somehow.” 

Monica, who had risen to get the cocoa tin, 
looked over her shoulder with a worried frown, 
and spilled a little on the table. 

“You’ve been getting wet lately,” she accused. 

“No, I haven’t—yes, I did though, about ten 
days ago, directly after you went. By the way, 
aren’t you back rather early?” 

“M’m, yes, perhaps. It was dull at home. I 
wanted to get back. One can’t work with people 
about. Did you miss me?” 

“Of course,” said Jan without any particular 
feeling. “It was horribly lonely without you, 
but—well I suppose we have to get it over some 


100 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


time. I’ve been thinking—you know, that thing 
we talked about before you left. It’s got to be 
faced.” 

“What thing?” 

“Oh, you know! Saying that your people 
wouldn’t care to know that we were living together 
—practically living together as we are. It isn’t— 
isn’t exactly good for a girl to have much to do 
with a divorced woman. It doesn’t matter so much 
down here, because no one knows who I am, but 
they may get to know, and then—it will be abso¬ 
lutely horrid, you know.” 

“I don’t know,” said Monica fiercely. “And 
I’m sure I shouldn’t care if I did. Shut up, Jan! 
You are talking the most utter rot I ever heard in 
all my life.” 

“It isn’t rot,” said Jan wearily. “That’s just 
the trouble. I owe you so much, and I don’t want 
to pay you that way if I can possibly help it. I 
don’t mean that I should soil you morally, because 
I don’t believe—even now I don’t believe, that 
morally I’m any worse than other people, but con¬ 
ventionally I may, and convention is—is a lot 
more important than one thinks to begin with. 
And so I think it would be better if we didn’t 
see so much of each other as we have done, and 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 101 


perhaps, presently, I had better go away altogether, 
only I don’t think I can afford it just yet.” 

Monica would have interrupted her, but Jan 
ignored her, and pursued her way, her eyes fixed 
on the toe of her shoe in apparent absorption. 

“I thought when I came here that if I told you 
I had been divorced, and you chose to have me 
here in spite of it, it was enough. I suppose I 
thought so because I wanted to think so. Anyway, 
there seemed no chance of the secret getting any 
further. But how can one be sure? Any day I 
may go to the village and see in everyone’s faces 
that they know. Any day! Did you ever read “The 
Scarlet Letter,” Monica? I’ve got it tacked on to 
my dress for anyone to see, if they only know 
where to look. When I meet anyone, my first 
thought is always: ‘Do you know?’ and after 
that ‘Have you remembered? Do you know that 
I am Jan Lovatt, that plague spot, that disease, 
that corruption?’ Very soon now everyone will 
be told. Everyone will begin to—stare. Why 
they stare I don’t know. I shall look as I looked 
the day before, but they’ll stare—only not at you. 
I won’t let them stare at you. The first time I 
managed badly. I let my best friend be daubed 
with my mud. Not again, oh, not again! It isn’t 


102 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


worth it. I ought to have known that I wasn’t 
fit to associate with anyone unless they were old 
enough, and irreproachable enough to touch pitch 
without soiling, and so-” 

“And so you will please leave off talking non¬ 
sense,” said Monica hotly. “I should never have 
left you, I see that. You have been brooding alone 
by yourself until you don’t know whether you’re 
Man Friday or Alexander Selkirk. A week ago 
you didn’t think you were a tar baby. This sack¬ 
cloth and ashes phase is a combination of under¬ 
feeding, and—I should say—a touch of influenza. 
It’s as much a hallucination as the red spiders a 
man thinks he sees after reading Omar. Feed up a 
little, and you’ll be a normal, self-respecting citizen 
again. You talk as if you were the only divorced 
woman in England, and on a par with a murderess. 
Why, there are thousands, and most of them carry 
on afterwards as if nothing had happened.” 

“Yes. When they’ve married the man they were 
divorced for. I didn’t. I couldn’t. There were 
three of them. Don’t you see yourself, what a 
difference that makes. It wasn’t a grand passion— 
people will forgive that—it was just senseless de¬ 
pravity; and mine was the sensational trial of the 
year. Why, I don’t know. It is like that. 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 103 

Hundreds of cases are hurried through, and nobody 
thinks anything about them, but mine—mine 
seemed to catch on. It was on the hoardings— 
everywhere. I—I heard they gagged about it in 
the music halls.” 

“How utterly disgusting!” 

“It doesn’t seem very funny to me. I don’t 
know how anybody turned it into a joke. But you 
see what I mean. It’s not as if I was merely a 
divorcee. I’m Jan Lovatt. When the people here 
know-” 

She broke off, shuddering violently, and rested 
her head on her hands, staring through interlaced 
fingers at the table. 

“You aren’t depraved,” said Monica with stub¬ 
born conviction. “Nobody but a fool would ever 
say you were. I simply refuse to discuss it. Oh, 
that cough of yours! I suppose you haven’t been 
taking anything for it either. Does it hurt?” 

“A little,” Jan confessed, her handkerchief 
pressed against her mouth to still the paroxysms. 
“I’ll take—ah—anything you like. I may have 
caught a chill.” 

“A chill!” sniffed Monica scornfully, and would 
have spoken further, but a hammering on the door 
overwhelmed speech. 



104 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“I ? m fearfully sorry,” apologised the knocker. 
“I couldn’t make anyone hear. Why, Jan, I 
thought the other cottage was yours. I’ve been 
pounding on the door for at least twenty min¬ 
utes.” 

“So it is,” said Jan. “This is Felix Royd, 
Monica; Miss Stuart, Felix.” She rose uncer¬ 
tainly. “If my fire has not gone out, I will make 
you some tea.” 

It had not, though the coals had grown dull. 
She found the bellows, and knelt before the feeble 
glow, puffing at it, the ruddy light warm on chin 
and throat and breast. Seen so, her patent ill- 
health was less noticeable, and, when she finally 
raised her face to Felix, he saw nothing beyond 
the general pinched look. 

“The Veraslyths told me that they had seen you 
here,” he explained in answer to her question. “I 
had a sort of idea that you wouldn’t send for me 
whatever happened—you’re such a stiff-necked 
little spalpeen—so I ran down for a week-end to 
see for myself. Why didn’t you write, Jan?” 

“I had nothing to say after that last note. Did 
you understand why I—ran away? I had to.” 

“Of course, I understood. You weren’t ready 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 105 

for me. I guessed that even before the supper 
episode. How are things now?” 

“I’m earning my living,” said Jan, with stubborn 
pride. 

She sat back on her heels watching him, her 
hands locked together between her knees, and he 
found himself wondering why he had never noticed 
before how large her eyes were—glinting pools of 
darkness in the pallor of her face. 

“You always were a brave little gentleman,” he 
commented softly. “D’you find it easy, Jan?” 

“Not particularly. Is anything?” 

“Nothing that’s worth doing. There, let’s be 
comfortable, Jan. One of the nicest things you 
ever said to me was that I had all the component 
parts of an easy-chair. I have. Rest yourself in 
me. It’s what I was made for. Lean your head 
against me metaphorically—physically, too, if you 
like. There is a place for all things, even for your 
straight little back. I’m not a man, you know. 
I’m a leaning-post. There, comfy?” 

He had adjusted himself with his usual large 
placidity, one arm flung round her shoulders, 
supporting them in a manner half brotherly, wholly 
comforting. Jan, who had made a faint momen- 


106 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


tary resistance, allowed her body to relax, and lay 
back more at ease than she had been for weeks; 
presently, suffered her hand to lie on his knee, 
their fingers meeting. 

“You are restful , Felix,” she told him in a faint, 
hoarse whisper, broken by an uncertain laugh. 
“You are the most comfortable thing in men I ever 
came across. Will you mind very much if I go 
to sleep that way?” 

“Not at all. Tired?” 

“A little. How long since I saw you last? A 
hundred years, isn’t it? I’ve missed you, Felix!” 

“That’s why I let you go perhaps. I had a 
feeling that one never prized the modest violet 
until the spring was flown, never turned to arnica 
until one fell downstairs. When you’re ready for 
me I’m here you know, Jan. I shan’t lose my 
relaxing qualities when I become a husband.” 

“What I like about you,” said Jan with weary 
unpleasantness, “is that it never seems to occur 
to you to omit the offer of marriage. Other people 
do, you know. With me it isn’t really necessary.” 

“You nasty little devil!” said Felix composedly. 

It was typical of their relation that neither had 
thought it worth while to move while they ex¬ 
changed hostilities. If anything, Jan’s head sank 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 107 


back a little further in making her thrust, and in 
the midst of his denunciation Felix’s eyes were 
tender. 

“What I like about you,” he mimicked pleas¬ 
antly, “is that you say the most abominable things 
to me with a serene confidence in the non-turning 
qualities of the worm. Somebody has presumably 
been worrying you, but you do not immediately fly 
to the conclusion that all mankind is a thing of 
naught. Who was it, Jan? Give me his name 
and address and I’ll bring you his head on a 
charger.” 

“Would you?” 

“Rather! Love to do it. It is the plain duty 
of a gentleman to knock the head of everybody who 
isn’t one. That is the idea underlying all knight 
errantry. Try me!” 

“I may some day.” Jan paused, wriggling her 
fingers thoughtfully, her eyes on the fire. “Felix, 
have you seen Tony lately, since—you know?” 

“He’s still in town, I believe, but naturally I 
don’t see much of him. Why, Jan?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. I wondered.” She 
faltered, and presently raised gleaming eyes, un¬ 
naturally bright, between the thick fringe of lashes. 
“Felix, you told me once that—that all that hap- 


108 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


pened, I mean, was mainly my own fault. I think 
I should like you to tell me that again. I was— 
very silly, wasn’t I? Anyone might have thought 
—what Tony thought.” 

“Good Lord! Do you mean to say that you 
want me to whitewash Lovatt for your edification?” 

“Well, you did say he wasn’t to blame,” Jan 
defended. 

“I said nothing of the kind. I said there were 
excuses. There were. There always are. For 
one thing, Waring was a pretty average rotter, and 
how you escaped finding it out I don’t know.” 

“I did—find it out.” 

“When?” 

“After the divorce he—oh, you know.” 

“Right!” said Felix cheerfully, “I’ll bash his 
face in for you. I’ve been aching to do it for 
months. I believe that he was out for mischief 
from the start; only your monumental innocence 
refuses to grasp that sort of thing until it simply 
stares you in the face. Anyway, you can see what 
I mean when I say there were excuses.” 

“I do. It might so easily have been. Only it 
wasn’t. Why do you believe in me, Felix? Are 
you quite sure that you do? I—I’ll forgive you if 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 109 


you don’t. I’ll forgive anybody anything to¬ 
night, only-” 

“What’s the matter?” said Felix sharply, 
alarmed at last by the succession of violent shud¬ 
ders which were sweeping over the little body rest¬ 
ing against his arm, and clicking her teeth like 
castanets. He rose hastily to his feet and held her 
at arm’s length to inspect her anxiously, and she 
drooped with the disjointed limpness of a rag doll, 
her eyes wide and faintly puzzled at herself. 

“What’s wrong, Jan? Your colour is all right, 
but you look odd somehow. Have you got a touch 
of ’flu or anything?” 

“I don’t know,” said Jan vaguely. “Things 
don’t seem to keep their right sizes or shapes. 
Wasn’t I going to make you some tea or something, 
and I haven’t even put the kettle on. I must— 
only my feet are funny. I wonder-” 

“You ought to be in bed,” said Felix, with 
anxious decision. “You ought to have a doctor, 
too. How hot your hands are.” 

“I wonder!” said Jan dreamily, and collapsed. 
Felix stood holding her in his arms and staring 
round the room in search of a second door which 
might lead to the staircase. Her weight was neg- 




110 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


ligible to a man of his strength, and he swung 
her off her feet against his shoulder, where she lay 
without protest as he carried her tenderly up the 
narrow stairs; but as he was laying her down on her 
bed she stirred slightly, put a languid arm about 
his neck, and drew his head down against her 
cheek. 

“Thank you, Tony,” whispered Jan huskily, and 
turned her head on the pillow like a sleepy child. 

“Oh damnation,” muttered Felix bitterly, and 
stood staring down at her in a passion of helpless 
wrath and pity. 

It seemed to him that she had never looked so 
pathetically small and defenceless. She reminded 
him vividly of a small grey squirrel which he had 
shot by accident in a not too distant boyhood. 
With painful distinctness he remembered the feel 
of the tiny creature as he had taken it into his 
hands, all moist and limp, still quivering in its 
last agony, and the pitiful, twitching jerk which had 
heralded the end. There was a terrifying similar¬ 
ity in the still body under his hands. What if Jan 
should be seriously ill! What if she should die on 
his hands before he had time to fetch help! Felix 
was supremely ignorant of degrees of illness. His 
troubled eyes swept the room as if he expected a 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 111 


helper to spring up from the naked floor; then, 
with a start of relief, he remembered the fuzzy- 
haired girl next door and fled. 

Monica was working over sheets of blotted fools¬ 
cap, and looked up irritably at his entrance, her 
hands still straying through the disorder of her 
brown mop. 

“I’m busy,” she said curtly. “Want anything?” 

“Jan’s ill.” 

“Of course she is.” Monica was scornful. 
“She hasn’t been properly fed for weeks, and for 
days she has been starving herself outright. What 
do you expect? I’ll come over. Have you put 
her to bed?” 

“Well, more or less.” 

“Do it properly then. I’ll make some beef tea 
and bring it over. I’ve got the cubes somewhere, 
and it’s hunger more than anything else that’s the 
matter. I ought never to have left her here alone. 
I might have expected something of the kind. Be 
as quick as you can. I won’t be long.” 

“But I can’t put her to bed,” Felix protested, 
aghast. 

“Rot! I won’t be ten minutes.” 

Monica swept him forth. 

Felix retraced his steps in some confusion, and 


112 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


found Jan still as he had left her, one arm trailing 
helplessly over the bed, her head thrown back a 
little, her eyes closed, lips slightly parted above the 
clenched teeth. Felix discovered that he was 
blushing furiously, but the terror of Monica was 
upon him, and he sat down on the edge of the bed 
and settled to his task of unlacing Jan’s shoes. 
Somehow the sight of her little bare feet, smooth 
and unspoiled as those of a child of ten, brought 
home a stab of consciousness of her pathetic im¬ 
maturity, her utter helplessness, and Felix cursed 
softly as he fumbled over his work, keeping his 
eyes studiously averted. The chance sight of Jan’s 
small white breast finally defeated him, and he 
hurriedly pulled a nightgown over her remaining 
clothes and tucked her into bed, praying fervently 
that the deceit would pass undiscovered. 

Monica, entering with burdens, was displeased, 
and took no trouble to hide it. 

“You have turned the bedclothes into a sort 
of strait-jacket,” she said severely. “That’s the 
very thing to give a patient nightmares. Anyone 
could have told you that. There, that’s my hot- 
water bottle. I don’t for one moment suppose that 
Jan has anything so sensible. The brandy in the 
beef tea will probably make it taste vile, but that 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 113 


doesn’t matter. The main thing is to get her to 
drink it while it’s hot. Lift up her head a little; I 
can get her teeth open with a spoon.” 

“Oughtn’t I to get a doctor?” said Felix nerv¬ 
ously, his eyes fixed on Monica’s rapid depositions 
in a sort of awed trance. 

He had lifted Jan’s head obediently, but the 
business of feeding was entirely out of his hands. 
His suggestion was treated with scorn. 

“There is no doctor,” said Monica. “None for 
ten miles anyway, and he’s a fool. And any good 
that Jan might possibly get by having him around 
would be balanced by the worry of having his bill 
to pay. Jan is too painstakingly honest to suffer 
debt gladly. I know what’s the matter all right. 
Starvation mainly, and a touch of pleurisy. She’ll 
get over it. Time enough to send for a doctor if 
she gets worse. I’ll throw over my other work to 
nurse her. It’ll be all right.” 

“It’s awfully good of you!” 

“Rot! I’d do a lot more than that for Jan. By 
the way, who are you? That sounds awfully rude, 
doesn’t it, but I should like to know how you come 
into this. Acquaintance, friend, or relative— 
which are you?” 

“Oh, a friend, I suppose.” 


114 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Aren’t you sure?” 

“I was wondering whether I should describe my¬ 
self as a suitor,” Felix explained with simple di¬ 
rectness. “You see, Jan' consistently turns me 
down, but I suggest the idea to her at intervals.” 

“How frightfully weak of you!” 

“Think so?” 

“Of course it is. If I were a man I should 
marry anyone I pleased. It’s perfectly easy. 
Any girl will marry any man who knows his own 
mind—that is, if she isn’t otherwise engaged. 
There, that’s the last of the beef tea. I’ll make 
some more in a couple of hours. This room is 
like an ice-house, and of course there’s no fire¬ 
place. There wouldn’t be. All the architects in 
England should be hanged, drawn and quartered. 
I have an oil lamp which doesn’t smoke much, but 
I think I won’t use it unless I have to resort to a 
steam kettle, which God forbid. There seems to 
be plenty on this bed for a wonder. I shall sit 
up to-night, of course. I’m not sleepy anyway. I 
suppose you haven’t had anything to eat for hours. 
Come downstairs and I’ll get you something. No 
trouble at all. I must get supper for myself, any¬ 
way. Come along!” 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 115 

“I think someone ought to stay with Jan,” Felix 
objected. 

Monica considered this and was pleased to agree 
with it, at least in so far as that they should not 
leave Jan’s kitchen. She returned to her own for 
a quarter of an hour to manufacture coffee and a 
dish of scrambled eggs with her usual swift dexter¬ 
ity, and was imperative that Felix should share 
them. 

“Food,” she informed him, “is one of the basic 
facts of life. One could do without love, friend¬ 
ship, and marriage, but not without food. It is 
the one household divinity that one cannot afford 
to take liberties with. I was going to add that that 
was nonsense. It is of course, but it’s sound com¬ 
mon sense as well. I was wondering if I like 
you.” 

“You have known me for over an hour,” Felix 
protested. “You ought to know by now.” 

“I do. I think I like you.” Monica propped 
her sharp chin in her hands and studied him with 
north-cold eyes. “Are you one of the brutes who 
got Jan divorced?” 

“Well, I was one of the co-respondents,” Felix 
admitted, “I don’t know whether that earns me 


116 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


the title of brute. Perhaps it does, but my in¬ 
tentions were and are most excellent. Why?” 

“I was wondering if you knew Jan’s husband?” 
said Monica thoughtfully. “What’s he like? 
What’s wrong with him?” 

“Nothing in particular. He’s just a thin dark 
fellow, rich as Croesus. I found him rather mono¬ 
syllabic, but that may have been my fault. In 
fact, if he thought I was making love to his wife I 
suppose it was only natural.” 

“Were you?” 

“Well, I don’t know.” Felix eyed her with some 
mischief. “You see, honoured lady, there are 
degrees in love-making, from the gentle flirtation 
which are as the flowers on the dinner-table of life, 
to the grand passion which is very uncomfortable 
for all concerned and rarely respectable. I do not 
say that I have made respectability my first aim 
in life, but there it is. I am not violent in my emo¬ 
tions. I have, incidentally, provided the reading 
public with some tit-bits of scandal, but it was 
almost accidental and quite unexpected. Like 
Byron, I awoke one morning to find myself famous. 
One felt rather taken aback, as if Destiny had just 
performed a conjuring trick, but there it was.” 

“Oh!” said Monica, and took some time to digest 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 117 

this, then went back to her original train of 
thought. 

“You’re sure there’s nothing radically wrong 
with him? He doesn’t drink or drug or do any¬ 
thing which makes it absolutely impossible for Jan 
to go back to him?” 

“Oh, well, you know, that isn’t exactly the 
situation. He simply wouldn’t have her at any 
price. It isn’t a question of going back to him.” 

“Yes, it is,” said Monica firmly. “Jan can’t 
look after herself. She thinks she can, but she 
can’t. She hasn’t been trained for it. Someone 
must do it for her, and who better than her hus¬ 
band? I don’t know much about divorce, but I do 
know that Jan never did anything which mightn’t 
have been published in a convocation of angels, 
and nobody but an idiot would think she had. 
Even supposing that he is an idiot, he has a right to 
know that she’s almost penniless. Do you think 
he does know it?” 

“I don’t,” Felix admitted. “But even if he 
did it wouldn’t be any use from Jan’s point of view. 
She won’t take his money if he offers it, let alone 
ask for it.” 

“Why should she when you can do it for her? 
You know him. Go up to London. Tell him that 


118 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


she needs help. If he doesn’t come for that he 
isn’t a man, and Jan had better starve without 
him, only I’ll see that she doesn’t.” 

“But you don’t understand.” Felix protested. 
“We aren’t on speaking terms. We never were 
intimate, and now-” 

“Oh, well, of course, if you are going to think 
of yourself.” 

“It’s a habit of mine,” said Felix meekly. 

“Then I’ve no more use for you. Selfishness 
is a disease, and I’ve one patient on my hands 
already. Don’t let me keep you.” 



CHAPTER X 


Jan’s was too healthy a little body to make a long 
business of recovery, and a few days showed her 
well out of the shadow of danger. Monica con¬ 
tested that there had never been any, but was none 
the less zealous in affectionate service. 

46 You may think you are strong enough to get 
up,” she said severely, after a heated struggle over 
the point. “I say you’re not, and I know best. 
Never contradict your elders. Do you think I 
want the trouble of nursing you all over again? 
Well, I don’t. Lie still!” 

“Oh, but I can’t,” Jan protested. “I’ve my 
work to do if you haven’t, and we neither of us 
belong to the leisured classes.” 

“Oh, rot!” said Monica. “If you get up now 
you go to bed again next week, and you can’t work 
unless your hands are steady. You’ll only drop 
stitches and generally make an ass of yourself. 

As for my own writing-” 

6 ‘There it is,” said Jan eagerly. “It’s fright¬ 
fully good of you to nurse me like this and keep 
119 



120 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


my house in order as well as your own, but you 
mustn’t think I don’t realise-” 

“What a burden you are to me? Rubbish! 
You’re copy. I’m so sick of my ghastly heroine 
that she’s going to be sick of herself for a change, 
and without you I should never have known how 
to do it. You’re a godsend to me. If you would 
only see your way to developing tuberculosis I 
wouldn’t have a thing left to wish for.” 

“Oh, that!” Jan laughed softly. “The cavern¬ 
ous eye, the hectic flush, the racking cough tearing 
the thin chest? My dear, you ought to be able to 
do it with your eyes shut.” 

“Of course I could, but your description lacks 
the realistic touch. For instance the racking cough 
would not only tear the gaunt chest, but bring 
fragments to the light of day in an utterly disgust¬ 
ing manner, and probably there wouldn’t even be 
a hectic flush, just blotches like a middle-aged 
spinster with indigestion. I don’t for instance 
know whether you cherish the illusion that you 
were particularly decorative last Thursday. You 
were not. You were a horrid whitey-green colour 
like a decomposed corpse, with purple patches 
over your eyes where they usually put pennies, 
and your breathing was horrid, like a snore falling 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 121 


downstairs, and as for the few delirious whis- 


66 Yes, I’ve been wondering about that.” Jan’s 
eyes were intent upon the ceiling. “Did I—talk?” 

“Well, if you call it talking,” said Monica 
grudgingly, “you muttered things, and kept on 
gritting your teeth like a cat with a nightmare, and 
you were about as intelligible. When I think of 
all the innumerable plots which hang on sick bed 
confessions—fakes, all of them fakes. I never 
caught a word. Were you afraid that you had 
been letting slip the murky secrets of your past?” 

“M’m, something of the sort. Monica, there’s 
another thing. While I have been in bed here you 
have been buying things for me. You must let 
me know what I owe you.” Seeing Monica hesi¬ 
tate she turned her head to face her with the 
candid sweetness which was her chief charm. “I 
know what’s worrying you, dear. It needn’t. At 
the risk of your offering me a loan I don’t mind 
saying that I am rather hard up, but I have enough 
money left to tide me over this, and, ridiculous 
as it seems, I don’t want to owe you for material 
things, though I’m oceans deep in debt for the 
things that money can’t buy.” 

“Pay me by taking what it can,” said Monica 



122 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


gruffly. “Look here, Jan, I’m not much good at 
talking sentimentally, but what I have is yours 
and what’s yours is mine—at least it would be if 
I were poor and wanted anything. It’s more gen¬ 
erous to take than to give. If I ever have 
the chance I’ll show you that by taking from you 
to your last mouthful. Oh, now I believe I’m 
making an ass of myself, but I don’t care so long 
as you know what I mean.” 

“I do know,” Jan confessed. “But, all the 
same, I’d be happier if you’d let me pay for this 
while I can. I can’t afford to be generous, you 
see, I’m so much poorer—oh, utterly poorer than 
you could ever possibly be, and if I give you my 
pride, my independence, I’m quite—naked. Don’t 
despise me, Monica! My self-respect is such a 
patched and threadbare garment at its best, just 
that I’ve never tried to melt down love and friend¬ 
ship into things to eat and drink. Sometimes I’ve 
come rather near it. I want to tell you about that 
—about everything. I want to tell you now.” 

“You needn’t,” said Monica abruptly. “I know 
all I want to know, that you’re the straightest thing 
that ever was. I don’t have to hear any more.” 

“Oh, yes, dear, you must.” Jan laughed rather 
mirthlessly, “You see things don’t work out so 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 123 


simply as all that. I remember I said once that 
I’d been punished for nothing, and Felix said that 
I hadn’t. That one was always responsible really 
for what happened to one. I think I see now what 
he meant by that. I didn’t at first, but I suppose 
that, in a way, I was to blame for what happened 
—only not in the way they said I was—and I can’t 
go on taking things from you, not even the custards 
and beef-teas, much less things that matter, until 
you are in a position to judge whether you want 
to give it. So listen, please!” 

“Very well, if you like. But it won’t make any 
difference.” 

“I hope not. Yes, that is what my altruism 
amounts to. I know that it’s best for you to drop 
me, but I hope you won’t.” 

She was silent for a moment, staring in front of 
her with unseeing eyes, her fingers picking nerv¬ 
ously at the sheet. When her voice came at last 
it was faint and irresolute, but gathered strength 
with speaking. 

“I don’t know; even now I can’t tell what was 
the start of the trouble, so I will begin right at the 
beginning. Not when I was born, of course; but 
with meeting Tony, my husband. 

“I had always been the pretty one at home. 


124 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


We weren’t any of us ugly; but—I was the eldest, 
and they always thought I should marry well. I 
—I think my people planned for it, and gave me 
specially nice frocks and petted me, and intro¬ 
duced me to rich people and all that sort of thing. 

“I was only nineteen when I married, so you 
see I hadn’t had time to fall in love with anybody 
else. There was just Tony. But he was very— 
eligible. Directly he even looked at me my people 
began to throw me at his head with both hands. 
I hated that, and so I rather ran away from him to 
balance things. It was a wonder we ever got 
married at all, we were so very much helped. I 
have sometimes thought since that perhaps Tony 
didn’t really want me at all; but if he didn’t it 
was frightfully weak of him to take me. Wasn’t 
it?” 

She broke off for a moment to send a fleet¬ 
ing, wistful glance in Monica’s direction, as if 
to see exactly how much the halting words con¬ 
veyed; then went on slowly, pausing to choose her 
phrases. 

46 Almost from the start we didn’t get along to¬ 
gether very well. It wasn’t that we quarrelled. 
We never did. No one could quarrel with Tony; 
but, considering we were living in the same house 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 125 


it was wonderful how seldom we seemed to meet, 
and how little we had to say to each other when we 
did. It wasn’t that it was a large house even. It 
was just like being in separate compartments in a 
railway carriage. Both going the same way in the 
same train, but as for being together, we simply 
weren’t. If Tony had been living in Yokohama 
we might have been nearer—easily. I don’t mean 
that I was unhappy. I wasn’t. I was too busy 
enjoying myself. That isn’t exactly the same 
thing, but to start with I didn’t know the difference. 
We hadn’t been poor at home, you see; in fact, 
judging from now, I should say that we had been 
quite well off; but I had never had money to play 
with before just to throw away in handfuls. Tony 
seemed to want me to do it, only— There 
was always an ‘only’ somewhere about, you see, 
and I never quite knew what came after that. He 
wanted me to have friends too, and I did, any 
number. I had nothing to do except frivol. I 
didn’t even look after the house. We had a house¬ 
keeper right from the start. Tony seemed to 
assume that I wouldn’t want the bother of it. We 
didn’t have any children either. These aren’t 
grievances, you know; they were just the way 
things were. I could have had them altered any 


126 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


time if I’d asked; only it wasn’t exactly easy to 
ask. I thought of doing it sometimes, but some¬ 
how I never did. 

“I wanted you to know the way we were living, 
because that makes it easier to understand what 
happened afterwards; but the lawyers began with 
Nice, so I suppose that that was really the start of 
the serious trouble. They said that I went there 
with a man. I did. His name was Pluffles, not 
his real name, of course, just a nickname; but I 
went with my sister, too. Tony was to follow us 
when he could get away. I knew that Pluffles 
would be on the same train. I didn’t mention it 
to Tony simply because it didn’t occur to me. I 
might have done it. Oh, easily, easily . It was 
one of the damnable little things that just happened. 
We were at Nice for a week before Tony came. 
For the last two days Mollie had neuralgia and was 
in her room most of the time. Pluffles was stay¬ 
ing in the same hotel. Naturally—I don’t see 
even now why it wasn’t natural—he used to come 
to our rooms when we didn’t go to the Casino to¬ 
gether. He was there the night that Tony arrived, 
and Mollie had gone to bed though it was only 
about ten o’clock. I wasn’t expecting Tony just 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 127 


then, but if I had been expecting him it wouldn’t 
have made any difference. It never occurred to 
me that he might not like it. I didn’t know even 
at the time that he didn’t. Of course the prosecu¬ 
tion said that I went to Nice to—to live with Pluf- 
fles, and took Mollie as a sort of stalking horse. I 
hope Tony didn’t think of that part for himself. 
Of course he may have done. He seems to have 
thought about as badly of me as it’s possible for a 
man to think of the woman he’s married; but he 
never said anything. Right up to the last he 
simply stood aside and gave me all the rope I 
needed to hang myself. I did it. Oh, I did it 
thoroughly. I didn’t realise until they began to 
pull at the end what loops and loops of hemp I 
had wound round my own throat. 

“I wish you had read the papers, Monica, then 
there would be no need to tell you all the horrible 
sordid details. They were all like that really. 
Just one damned thing after another. I had more 
men friends than women, and I wasn’t careful. 
I didn’t know I had to be. One of the men was 
what they said he was, a waster and a libertine, 
but he was never so with me until after I was 
divorced; then he wrote and asked me to go abroad 


128 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


with him—not as his wife. I think Felix is the 
only man living who will ever think of me in that 
way again. Felix is very nice. He doesn’t love 
me at all, but he thinks it is his duty to make up 
for getting me divorced. It isn’t, of course. I 
would have been divorced anyway. There was 
plenty of circumstantial evidence even without 
him, much more than there would have been if I 
had been what they said I was, because then I 
would have known enough to be careful. As it 
was I hadn’t any defence except my word, and no 
one wanted to take that. You see the evidence was 
all true. It was only the inferences they drew 
from it which were so cruelly unjust. I’d been 
silly, and frivolous, and quite madly imprudent, 
but nothing else, before God nothing else!” 

“You don’t have to tell me that,” said Monica. 
“I knew, right from the first moment.” 

“It’s very nice of you.” Jan slid her hand over 
the sheet to meet Monica’s firm clasp, with a grate¬ 
ful squeeze. “It’s funny, though, that you should 
believe when my own people didn’t.” 

“Fools!” said Monica between her teeth. 
“Fools, dolts, idiots. Oh, I know I’m speaking of 
your relations, Jan, but I don’t care. They are 
all—all quite mad, and your husband was a mind- 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 129 


less brute, and the jury corrupted dunces. I don’t 
have to be told. I know.” 

“But I don’t think the British juries are cor¬ 
rupted, and anyway there was no one for them to 
be corrupted by. Tony wouldn’t have done it even 
if he had wanted to. I did think at the time that 
he might have brought the case simply to be rid 
of me, but now I don’t think even that. It was 
just a mistake from beginning to end. If we had 
ever been anything but strangers to each other 
it couldn’t have happened. If Tony had ever 
thought of me as a wife instead of a pampered 
baby he would have told me when he was jealous. 
If I had ever stopped to think what he was getting 
out of the marriage business, I must have seen. 
But I didn’t, and he didn’t, and we have no one but 
ourselves to thank.” 

“But if it was only a mistake it can be cleared 
up. It isn’t as if there was anything past mend¬ 
ing.” 

“I suppose,” said Jan thoughtfully, “that you 
wouldn’t say that life was past mending because 
one hadn’t a shred of reputation left. I can live 
without reputation. In fact I do, and I shall have 
to go on doing it, but as for being cleared, how can 
I be? I have said I was innocent once and no one 


130 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


believed me. I can’t go on protesting. My 
sentence is for life; I think I faced that almost at 
once. If I had done what they said I did I sup¬ 
pose that I should be sodden with misery instead of 
smarting with it, but that’s all the difference it 
makes for practical purposes. Oh, Monica, isn’t 
it bitterly, bitterly unfair. Why did everyone 
have to know? Wasn’t the shame and the heart¬ 
break of it bad enough without all that ghastly, 
blistering publicity. Even if they mean it as a 
punishment for a sin that isn’t criminal, the people 
who deserve it don’t feel it, and those who do— 
Even if I had been acquitted I should have to go 
through that first!" 

She pulled herself together with a quick, con¬ 
vulsive shrug and turned gleaming eyes on Monica. 

“There, I think that’s all, unless there are any 
questions you want to ask. I’d rather not talk of 
this again. Are there?” 

“There aren’t,” Monica decided, “but, Jan, I 
want to say that I love you. And now I’ll go and 
get supper.” 


CHAPTER XI 


“The woman will disapprove of me!” Felix com¬ 
plained, his eyes full of mischief. 

He had spent the morning in wordy warfare over 
nothing, and at his protest Jan broke into care-free 
laughter for the first time in weeks. 

“Do you? Oh, Monica, why?” 

“He is a frivol,” Monica accused hotly, “a 
fripon, a thing-about-the-house. He lives to be 
comfortable.” 

“It is an ideal,” Felix admitted. “Happiness 
is an ephemeral thing. Comfort is not. One may 
say without fear of contradiction that one is or has 
been comfortable, whereas to be truly happy it is 
necessary to be less so, both before and after. 
One never knows that one is happy at the time, only 
afterwards. What a waste! I get no more good 
out of knowing that I have been happy than my 
creditor gets out of being informed that I had a 
bank balance. He is just as vociferous over his 
dishonoured cheque, and rightly so. The past is 

not negotiable for practical purposes. That is the 
131 


132 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


great test for value. Is a thing negotiable? Can 
it be turned into something else? If not, it isn’t 
worth the room it takes up. Now my comfort is 
negotiable. For instance, I know three separate 
people who would move heaven and earth to get 
me out of my flat. The fact of knowing it gives 
me a warm sensation about the heartstrings when¬ 
ever I put my latchkey in the door. I can say: 
‘This is mine. It does not belong to Smith, or 
Jones, or Robinson.’ They wish it did. This 
chair is modelled to fit me. When I sink into it 
my excrescences answer its depressions each to 
each. The cushion matches my wig to a hair. I 
have two simultaneous satisfactions: one that I am 
comfortable; two, that it is impossible for Smith or 
Jones or Robinson to be similarly comfortable. 
There is nothing of deferred payment about that. 
I do not have to wait until someone opens the door 
and lets a current of cold air down my back before 
I know that I am at ease.” 

“Poor fish!” said Monica with energy. “Do 
you mean to say that you expect nothing better of 
life than to eat, and sleep-” 

“And be merry,” Felix acquiesced. “But so far 
as I know I shall not die to-morrow. My health is 
very flourishing.” 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 133 


“You will,” said Monica viciously; “you will 
die of fatty degeneration of the heart and liver. I 
shall not come to your funeral, but I will send a 
wreath of sage and onions. Have you no soul, 
man?” 

“None,” said Felix, with proud simplicity, and 
Monica abandoned him. 

“Birds of a feather,” Felix quoted at her retreat¬ 
ing back. “I always said you were a termagant, 
Jan, but you have been unusually gentle this morn¬ 
ing, I notice.” 

“My ruffling was done by proxy,” Jan suggested 
with a twinkle. “You seem to find each other 
interesting.” 

“There is a felicity in, disagreement,” Felix 
admitted. 

He crossed the room to seat himself on the arm 
of Jan’s chair, and regarded her with eyes of agree¬ 
able speculation. Her dark blue jersey and short 
hair turned her into a schoolgirl again, and if the 
childish curve of her cheek was a little diminished, 
the fresh colour of it was beginning to show again 
like almond blossom on ivory. He put a hand on 
the slim shoulder and shook it gently. 

“Jan!” 

“Yes.” 


134 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Have you any idea how lovely you are?” 

“Of course. It isn’t long since your last pro¬ 
posal, my dear. Is this another opening?” 

“If you call it an opening. The question was 
never closed, and I am liable to go on asking you 
until you say you will. What is your objection to 
me, Jan? Does my outside give you the shivers?” 

“You know it doesn’t. Oh, vain! That is what 
you were angling for; and now that I have pandered 
to your conceit to the extent of saying that I like 
you enormously, I will be a sister to you and love 
you as a Christian. Will that satisfy you?” 

“Skim milk!” Felix made a face at her. “Of 
course I know your reasons, my dear. They’re 
nothing. If you can point to a stain on you, real 
or imaginary, that isn’t on me as well-” 

“But with a man it doesn’t matter. You have 
an oilcloth reputation, dickeys, celluloid collars, 
and cuffs. A wet sponge whenever you like, and 
there you are. Respectability itself, a church¬ 
warden if you like, and I shall be—‘an odious 
woman married.’ ” 

“Don’t!” Felix reddened with sudden anger. 
“It’s abominable, and it’s untrue, and it makes me 
feel that I want to smash the world. Jan, Jan, 
don’t you see how I want to take care of you, and 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 135 


have the right to fight every damned liar who dares 
to say that!” 

“It’s like you, dear.” Jan reached for his hand 
and pulled it against her cheek, her eyes starry. 

“Who was it who defined love as an unaccount¬ 
able desire to pay for a strange woman’s board 
and lodging? If I believed that I think I’d marry 
you, Felix. I nearly did, you know, that time I 
came to your flat when I thought it was you or the 
Thames, but my courage was at a low ebb just then. 
I’ll never victimise you, dear. You’re too fine for 
second best. You’ve got to have someone who 
doesn’t reek of rotten eggs. You’ve got to have a 
woman who can teach you how to love her 
properly.” 

“I love you. I’ve said it.” 

“But you don’t even know what it means. If 
you did you wouldn’t be put off with substitutes. 
The real thing isn’t to be mixed up with everything 
else. It’s something that doesn’t stop short any¬ 
where; that goes on living even after it’s been 
weeded up and thrown away. Something that 
doesn’t count the cost of itself or reason why it is; 
that can’t be outraged beyond forgiveness simply 
because it doesn’t understand forgiveness. Every¬ 
thing that comes into conjunction with it is lost at 


136 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


once, is—is almost unimportant. Felix, you shall 
not dare to ask me if I mean any special person by 
this!” 

“I don’t have to,” said Felix shortly. 

He rose and walked over to the window, where 
the pane, blurred by drifting rain, showed a land¬ 
scape dimly grey and desolate. A stray branch 
of creeper had been blown across it, and still 
oscillated faintly, as if tapping for admission. 
Suddenly he swung round and looked at Jan, lying 
curled up before the fire, its soft glow tinting her 
absorbed face, and finding a new, warm radiance 
in the jewel-bright eyes. 

“Would you take the fellow back, Jan?” 

She raised her eyes to him, considered the point 
with dreamy detachment, and nodded gravely. 

“If he wanted me, yes. I’m not particularly 
proud any more, but he would have to want me, 
and now he never will. What’s the use of think¬ 
ing of impossibilities? I’ve had my chance and 
wasted it. A second doesn’t come in this life. 
But I can bear it, Felix. You needn’t look so wor¬ 
ried. And you don’t have to tell me that I should 
have the moon if you could get it for me, only it 
happens to be out of reach.” 

When Felix left her half an hour later he had 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 137 


come to a decision. If Jan wanted a thing, very 
well, it must be done, however unpalatable the do¬ 
ing might prove to himself; nor was there much 
doubt as to the best and shortest way of doing it. 
Felix still belonged to one of Anthony’s clubs. 
There had been no unpleasantness about his con¬ 
tinued membership, for his popularity there was 
immense, and such as had yet found no opportunity 
of selling him a car that would not go or a picture 
with no name to it were presumably buoyed up by 
the hope of some time performing that benevolent 
action. Hitherto Felix had felt that tact demanded 
his self-effacement, but he had no particular ob¬ 
jection to emerging from his obscurity if the pub¬ 
lic weal demanded it. Luck was with him, and 
almost at once he had the pleasure of sighting his 
quarry. There were two other men in the smoking- 
room, which struck him for the moment as un¬ 
fortunate, but they appeared to be engaged in their 
own affairs. Anthony was sitting apart, appar¬ 
ently unconscious of Felix’s entrance, and a mo¬ 
ment afterwards he rose, flinging down the paper 
he had been reading, and stood looking out at the 
hurrying traffic of Piccadilly. Felix, seizing his 
opportunity, made a rapid swoop and touched 
his arm. 


138 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“May I have a few minutes with you, Lovatt?” 

There was a startled jerk, and then Anthony 
turned without hurry and surveyed him from head 
to foot, his dark eyes enigmatic. 

“Why?” 

“I wanted to speak to you about Jan.” 

“Have you a message for me?” 

“No.” 

“Then I don’t see why it should be necessary. 
Jan has my address if she likes to send to me, but 
if not I’m not specially interested. We agreed to 
go our own ways, and I don’t think I want to talk to 
you.” 

“If you think I get any pleasure out of it—” 
Felix began hotly, and then abandoned the point. 

“If you know anything whatever of Jan you 
must know that she’d starve before she’d ask for 
help, but she needs it pretty badly. She’s been ill, 
and she is almost alone, and she hasn’t enough 
money to live on.” 

“Isn’t that your affair?” 

“Mine!” Felix stared at him. “Oh, I see what 
you mean. Well, if you want to know, I haven’t 
seen Jan more than half a dozen times since she was 
divorced. She won’t be my wife, and I can’t very 
well get her to take my money without that, though 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 139 


heaven knows she’s welcome to it. She is living 
in a God-forsaken little village on the coast, and 
when I went down there a few weeks ago she was 
light-headed, mainly through not having enough to 
eat. Well, what are you going to do about it?” 

“Starving!” Anthony repeated uncomprehend- 
ingly. “I don’t understand. How can she be? 
Why, it isn’t a year yet, and-” 

“How much money had she to start with?” 

“I don’t know. I offered to provide for her, of 
course. She refused quite definitely. I under¬ 
stood that she had made her own arrangements.” 

“You would!” said Felix scornfully. “As it 
happens, if you knew what she had when you left 
her, you would have a very good idea of what she 
has to-day, less what it has cost to keep her alive 
for the time between. Up to the present she has 
not accepted a penny from the people to whose 
protection you kindly consigned her. It has been 
offered, of course. She prefers to live in two tiny 
rooms and struggle to make a living in the face of 
every conceivable obstacle. I suppose you’ll tell 
me that’s not your business.” 

“It is my business—that is, if it’s true, and I 
don’t see why you should lie about it. I don’t see 
why you should speak to me at all, if it comes to 



140 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


that. I’m quite helpless. Jan won’t take my 
money if I send it. She wouldn’t before. Have 
you any reason to suppose that she has changed her 
mind?” 

“Six months ago she had no idea how damnable 
it was to shift for herself.” 

“I see that.” Anthony turned his head away, 
staring across the room with unseeing eyes. “If 
I sent her down a blank cheque, do you think there’s 
the remotest chance of its ever being used?” 

“Not the slightest.” 

“There are her jewels, of course. She sent them 
back; but naturally I haven’t any use for them. 
They are worth a great deal.” 

“That’s better,” Felix approved. “But you 
must give them to her yourself, or she will come to 
the conclusion that I asked for them, and then 
nothing on earth will persuade her to touch them. 
It will be a devil of a job anyway, but perhaps, 
with tact-” 

“I never intend to see Jan again,” said Anthony, 
with quiet energy. “You say that she is starving, 
and, of course, I admit that it is my business to 
attend to that. I’ll settle anything she pleases on 
her, and the jewels have always been hers, but I 
will not see her!” 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 141 


“If you don’t you’ll never get her to touch a 
farthing of your beastly money.” Felix restrained 
his inclination to shout with an effort. “Jan isn’t 
a servant, to be pensioned off when you have no 
further use for her. Man, can’t you understand 
that her pride is raw with the treatment she has had 
already? Oh, I didn’t come here to quarrel with 
you as to whether or not it was just. I always said 
that you believed in your own case, and as far as 
I am concerned I don’t care twopence whether you 
think me a rascal or not; but Jan is different. You 
had the power to ruin her for any sort of life except 
the one which she won’t live, and you seem to think 
that if she has any claim on you it can be met with 
a cheque. If that’s your attitude she’s well rid of 
you. There’s her address. Keep it or throw it 
away as you like. I’m damned if I care!” 

He turned to go, but Anthony recalled him with 
a gesture. 

“You said Jan had been ill. What was the 
matter?” 

“We called it pleurisy.” Felix gave his head a 
quick, indignant toss. “It was mainly work she 
wasn’t accustomed to and worries she never ought 
to have had, and insufficient food—actual, physical 
want! She was wasted away to a little bundle of 


142 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


bones and for most of the first night she mistook— 
didn’t know me.” Felix bit back the admission 
which had nearly escaped him. 

“You nursed her?” 

“Yes. Would you have preferred it if I had 
turned my virtuous back upon her and returned to 
London? As a matter of fact, I couldn’t do much. 
A girl who lives in the other half of the cottage is 
taking care of her, and doing it very well. Curious 
as it may seem, she does it for love, not for charity; 
but she isn’t rich herself, and I rather think that she 
has a hard struggle to find the means to do it at all.” 

“It’s very good of her,” said Anthony slowly. 
“I suppose that, in a way, it’s very good of you, 
too. Has Jan shown any signs of wanting me?” 

Felix considered that before answering, then 
decided that he had said enough without betraying 
a confidence. 

“She never asked for you,” he said, truthfully 
enough. “Did you expect her to, after what has 
happened?” 

“No,” Anthony admitted, and winced a little. 
“I don’t know that I should have expected it, in 
any case. Well, thank you for telling me. I 
suppose there is nothing else you want to say?” 

“Nothing!” said Felix sharply, and swung away. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 143 


Outside the door he remembered with a joyous 
thrill that he had promised to settle with Waring, 
but in the press of other matters had neglected to do 
so. The rare urge of righteous indignation was 
already surging and tingling through every muscle 
of his big body, and it was an opportunity not to be 
missed. 

He hailed a taxi. 


CHAPTER XU 


“I ALWAYS understood,” said Jan, with borrowed 
severity, ‘‘that you worked for your living.” 

“Well, so I do.” 

Felix dropped a four-pound box of chocolates in 
her lap, offered another to Monica with unusual 
nervousness, and, obviously relieved by her frigid 
acceptance, turned to prowl about the kitchen in 
search of a comfortable chair. 

“We love to have you,” Jan told him lazily, 
“—no, I am sitting on the only one with cushions, 
and I am not going to get up—but at the same time 
we cannot help remembering that you only left us 
on Tuesday, and that to-day is Friday. Monica 
feels very strongly about it. Don’t you, Monica?” 

“Well, hang it all, can’t a fellow have a quiet 
week-end fishing?” 

“I can’t speak for other places, but in Otway, at 
this time of the year, it isn’t done. If you’re going 
to stay, Felix, you must cut the bread and butter. 
I—must finish—this—abominable—sleeve—be¬ 
fore I do anything else.” 


144 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 145 


“He has a bruised cheek,” Monica accused, 
looking up from the tray she was arranging. “It 
is very ugly. Ask him where he got it.” 

“I noticed it,” Jan admitted, “but I thought 
maybe it would be more tactful to pretend that I 
didn’t. Felix’s colour-scheme is red and blue, and 
the bruise is red and blue, but somehow not the 
right shades. Where did you get it, dear? It 
doesn’t look very respectable.” 

“Waring!” said Felix briefly. “It was the only 
one he got home, and both his eyes are closed up, 
and his mouth is cut about. When I left him he 
was sitting in a rose-bush and feeling very sorry 
for himself.” 

“Oh!” said Jan, and flushed painfully. “I wish 
I hadn’t told you. It didn’t matter really.” 

“But, my dear, I enjoyed it! You know how 
fond he is of his roses—grows them for exhibition 
or something? Well, I lured him out to them. 
Said I wanted to see how they were getting on. He 
seemed a bit surprised, because, as a matter of fact, 
they weren’t blooming, or apparently even thinking 
of doing it, but he swallowed the bait all right and 
took me round. I meant to wait until he had 
shown me his favourites, but my feelings were too 
much for me, so I threw him at the biggest ones. 


146 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


and pulled up the rest. It was a glorious mill—at 
least it would have been if he hadn’t been so flabby. 
I had dropped him on two rose-trees before he 
seemed to realise that I was trying to be offensive.” 

“Brawling is vulgar,” said Monica, and thrust a 
breadknife upon him. “Shall I boil you an egg, 
Jan? You mayn’t stay up to supper.” 

“Why mustn’t I?” said Jan rebelliously. “I’m 
well again now, and I will not be mollycoddled. I 
will not be made to feel an infant, neither will I 
have high tea. That is a lot more vulgar than 
brawling. I wonder you don’t suggest a kipper.” 

“I should if I thought it was likely to be good for 
you,” said Monica firmly, and reached for a sauce¬ 
pan. Her eyes were kind. “Leave that jumper 
alone, Jan. I’ll finish the sleeve for you.” 

“You will not,” said Jan indignantly. “You 
have done enough for me as it is. I am well, and 
I am going to stand on my own feet again. Be¬ 
sides, how do you know that I don’t like knitting?” 

“Guessed it. Do you?” 

“I loathe it,” said Jan, with sudden passionate 
frankness. “There are times when I would give 
my immortal soul to destroy every ball of Sylko on 
the face of the globe. There is only one thing I 
dislike more, and that is cheese, with its odious 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 147 


appearance of representing so many proteids or 
calories or whatever it is. Solid, uninteresting 
cheese, with its red rind, reminding you of long¬ 
toothed rats, and its smooth, self-satisfied face 
staring at you like a half-moon with all the mystery 
left out. Felix, you were a dear to bring me these 
chocolates, and I love you.” 

“I know you do,” said Felix drily. “At the 
same time, I think it would be just as well if 
you took the advice of your elders and went to 
bed, leaving me with this acrid female who does 
not.” 

“Not at all!” said Jan, her grey eyes sparkling 
with mischief. “I am going to show you that I am 
quite well by dancing a pas seul directly I have had 
my tea. Prosit!” 

“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” said Monica 
hotly. 

“Yes, I shall. Why, Monica, you don’t know 
me if you have never seen me dance. I have star¬ 
dust on my toes, haven’t I, Felix? Slip, slop, 
gobble—there goes my tea. Who said I had been 
ill?” 

She rolled up her knitting in a tight ball, and, 
transfixing it viciously with the needles, stood up, 
frowned, and sat down again, tugging at her shoes, 


148 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Eat your food at once!” Monica commanded 
wrathfully, “What do you suppose I get it for, you 
ungrateful loon?” 

“Not knowing, can’t say!” 

Jan kicked loose her shoes, and rose, balancing 
on stockinged feet. 

“Lord, this skirt is a weight. I might as well 
try to move in a leaden coffin. Wait a moment! 
An idea strikes me! The clean curtains! Find 
me some pins, Monica! I faithfully will go to bed 
directly.” 

She fled, gurgling laughter, and reappeared five 
minutes later, the short check curtains pinned 
about her shoulders and falling toga fashion to the 
knee, pirouetted to the middle of the room, and 
stood there, bare arms spread. 

“Do you remember when I last did this, Felix? 
At the Gunthers’, wasn’t it? Move the table a 
little, will you? Other couples get to the walls 
and stay there. The beautiful Mrs. Lovatt will 
now perform.” 

She waved imaginary dancers to one side and 
slid into movement. Jan had spoken truly when 
she claimed to have star-dust on her toes, and 
Monica, whose experience of professional dancers 
was small, guessed vaguely at the quality of what 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 149 


she saw, and gazed absorbed and ecstatic. Felix, 
who had seen the same before, but for whom the 
charm never faded, propped his chin on his hands 
and applauded mutely when Jan paused for ap¬ 
preciation, her hands fluttering down to her slim 
hips. 

“I am rather tired,” she admitted breathlessly. 
“I don’t think I’ll do any more to-night. Like it, 
Monica?” 

“It’s beautiful,” Monica breathed adoringly. 
“Why didn’t you go on the stage, Jan? With your 
looks and that-” 

“Never thought of it.” Jan had drifted across 
the floor, weaving the words into her steps. 
“There’s the post! Open the door, will you, 
Monica? I might give the dear, good man a 
shock.” 

She broke off, looking aghast into her husband’s 
face, then fluttered down into a magnificent curtsey, 
deep as a sigh and mocking as laughter. 

“Good afternoon, Tony. My house is yours. 
Will it please you to come in?” 

“I do not know who this man is,” said Monica 
austerely, “but I feel sure that we are de trop. If 
you will bring the tea things, Mr. Royd, I will wash 
them up in my own kitchen.” 



150 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“You are a sibyl, old in wisdom!” muttered 
Felix fervently, “and-” 

“I do not see the slightest reason why either of 
you should go,” said Jan, rising from the floor, her 
cheeks flushed combatively. “This is the man who 
used to be my husband, Monica. We have nothing 
private to say to each other.” 

Anthony held the door open, and waited in 
polite silence. His patience was rewarded. 

When they were alone he turned and surveyed 
his wife with thoughtful eyes. 

“What was that you were dancing, Jan?” 

“Oh, the old spring thing. You’ve seen it heaps 
of times.” 

“Done for the general public, yes. I hope Royd 
enjoyed it!” 

“So do I!” Jan finished lacing her shoes and 
stood erect, her eyes defiant. 

“Tony, there is one word which expresses my 
feelings for you, and it isn’t an English one. This 
isn’t your house, you know; and you have no 
licence to insult me in it.” 

“Whose house is it?” 

“Mine, as it happens. If you don’t want to 
believe it you needn’t. I don’t care. What did 
you come here for, anyway?” 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 151 


“I fancied you might need me. A quaint idea, 
wasn’t it?” 

“Oh, Felix!” Jan caught her lip in her teeth 
and her eyes boded ill for the absent go-between. 
“Well, I suppose it goes without saying that I can¬ 
not live without your magnificent self. And I 
always used to consider you unassuming! Did 
you find it easy to believe that—that I whisper 
your name of nights to a tear-wet pillow, my heart’s 
high lord?” 

“It didn’t seem very likely,” Anthony admitted. 
His eyes appraised the white-rose pallor of her face, 
the thinness of her bare arms, the Spartan sim¬ 
plicity of the room behind her. 

“No, I didn’t credit you with any sudden burst 
of affection for me, Jan; but it did occur to me 
that you might need money. It might have been 
better to have sent some without asking. I wish 
now that I had.” 

“If you had!” 

Jan drew a sharp breath, and held out her hand. 

“Did you bring down an instalment, by any 
chance?” 

“Yes.” 

“Give it me, please!” 

She took the proffered note-case, emptied it of 


152 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


its wad of banknotes, and, without pausing to count 
them, carried it over to the stove, and thrust it in. 

“Melodramatic,” said Jan briskly, as the flare 
gilded her neck and chin, “but highly necessary. 
That may serve to convince you, Tony. I resent 
being hired as an Aunt Sally for any rotten eggs 
you may have to dispose of, nor will I be paid 
after the event. Henceforth any income I can’t ac¬ 
count for goes into that stove without any pause 
for consideration. Satisfied?” 

“Well, hardly!” Anthony, who had watched 
the bonfire without great emotion, crossed the room 
to stand beside her. 

“What have you to live on, Jan?” 

“What I can earn by knitting—about twenty to 
thirty shillings a week. It’s enough. Your stand¬ 
ard of living is extravagant.” 

“It’s what yours was a few months ago.” 

“Circumstances alter cases,” said Jan mali¬ 
ciously. “One needs a large income to support the 
honour and glory of being Mrs. Anthony Lovatt— 
and to keep up one’s spirits under it. You have 
your drawbacks as a companion, Tony, though you 
may not have noticed it. Not to put too fine a 
point upon it, you would drive better women to 
drink.” 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 153 


“Jan, is that true?” Anthony gripped her wrist 
with sudden force and swung her round to meet his 
eyes. “Was life so intolerable to you that you had 
to do—what you did? Tell me the truth for once. 
I’ve starved to know!” 

“I never told you anything else.” 

Jan disengaged herself coldly, and surveyed her 
bruised wrists with ostentatious surprise. 

“I wish I knew what you were trying to find out, 
Tony. You have a horror of direct questions, I 
know, but I don’t see why you need carry it into 
your relations with me when the witness-box is a 
home to me. Any false delicacy seems out of 
place after the rest.” 

“Do you suppose for one moment that I enjoyed 
that—that sordid hell?” 

“Well, I suppose so. You ordered it, and paid 
for it. Oh, pax! I don’t want to squabble over 
who was to blame. If you won’t take my word, 
you won’t, and there’s an end of it.” 

“You never gave me your word.” 

“Would you have believed me if I had?” Jan 
raised shining eyes, a ghost of hope struggling in 
their clear depths. “Tony, I’ll swear I didn’t do 
it if you like. Would you accept that?” 

“I—can’t.” 


154 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Oh, very well,” said Jan listlessly. “I sup¬ 
pose if you really can’t, it’s no use trying to. Any¬ 
way, I don’t seem to have wasted much time by not 
denying it before.” 

She sat down beside the fire and regarded him 
wistfully, her chin cupped in her hands. Her 
voice was dreamy, almost toneless. 

“I wonder what I have ever done that you should 
think me a liar, Tony. The other thing I can un¬ 
derstand more or less, but that— Perhaps you 
believe that it’s natural to a woman to lie in de¬ 
fence of her reputation. It may be. I wouldn’t 
have said that to save myself from a mediaeval 
thrashing, bare back, cart-tail, and thongs, but I 
suppose you won’t believe that either. You know 
you should really have married a meek, weak, lov¬ 
ing sort of woman, who would have wept and pro¬ 
tested when you tried to turn her out of the house. 
You couldn’t strike at anything that clung and 
cried, could you? Well, better luck next time; 
and that, I think, closes the interview.” 

“There never will be a next time!” said Anthony 
passionately. “Jan, can’t you realise that I love 
you—oh, not a little? Enough to want to be told 
that it was my fault from beginning to end; that 
you weren’t morally rotten—just tempted and not 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 155 


protected. Jan, were there things I could have 
done which would have made any difference?” 

“No, I’ve nothing to complain of.” 

“Then why? Why?” 

“Oh, what’s the use?” said Jan wearily, and 
allowed her head to sink forward a little upon her 
screening fingers. 

“What’s the use of asking me questions if you 
won’t believe the answers? Won’t you go, please, 
Tony? I’m very tired.” 

“I’m sorry, Jan!” 

“Of course. It’s all right.” 

Anthony went towards the door, hesitated, and 
then came back and stood beside his wife’s chair, 
staring down at the bowed head, his long, nerv¬ 
ous fingers clenching and unclenching themselves 
against the cushioned back. After a moment he 
dropped upon his knees and put his arms round the 
small, crouching body. 

“Jan, my Jan, is it all no use? I want to for¬ 
give you. I want to take you back and be sure that 
you’re properly looked after—safe. I don’t care 
what you’ve done—not very much. You’re mine, 
to take care of always, to comfort if you need it 
and I want you so. Come back to me, Jan.” 

“Why, dear?” 


156 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 

“I can’t bear to know that you’re starving. Oh, 
you needn’t live with me—only in the same house. 
I shan’t worry you. I never did, did I? You 
don’t even have to know that I love you unless you 
need me. I’ll help you to keep straight. If you 
just can’t I’ll—try to stand it somehow.” 

“Can’t you believe, not possibly, that I have been 
—good?” 

“I’ll say I believe, if you like.” 

“No, don’t. I don’t want a lie from you. And 
so it’s just the same old story over again. From 
you to me, a roof for my head, and food, and 
things to wear, and from me to you, what? I was 
happy enough with that sort of life when I didn’t 
understand what it meant, but to go back to it with 
my eyes open—I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. 
Go away, Tony. I don’t need you, and, thinking 
as you do, you aren’t much of a help to my 
self-respect. Try to believe that I’m living clean 
now, whatever I did before, and good-bye, my 
dear.” 

Anthony did not move, tightened his arms if any¬ 
thing, his face hidden in her lap, and Jan, blinded 
by unshed tears, made no effort to push him away. 
She was utterly spent by the emotions of the past 
hour, hopeless for the future, content to rest in the 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 157 


beloved hold, knowing that it must presendy be 
withdrawn, hut hardly caring, all feeling dulled 
by the stupor of physical fatigue. She drooped, 
listless, her hands straying through the dark hair. 
After all, what was the use of struggling? Oh, 
what was the use? 

Anthony spoke again, his voice muffled by the 
folds against his mouth. 

“How thin you are, my darling. How cruelly 
thin!” 

“What did you expect?” 

“I don’t know. I didn’t think of it. I wouldn’t 
let myself think. It seemed so certain that you 
were with one of those others. Why aren’t you, 
Jan? No, don’t answer. I don’t want to think of 
them just now, just when I am persuading myself 
that they don’t matter. I know it was my fault. 
A man isn’t a man if he can’t guard his own wife. 
There must have been some way to put a stop to 
it—something definite, something masculine. And 
I could only stand by and watch. That is all I am 
good for—to watch. I couldn’t expect any woman 
to stick to me, let alone you, you splendid, radiant 
thing. Such miracles don’t happen. I was mad 
to hope that one would. No, don’t push me away. 
I won’t try to kiss your face, not even your hands 


158 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


if you had rather I didn’t. It doesn’t hurt you to 
let me hold you like this for a few minutes before 
I go!” 

“I wonder what those two are talking about,” 
said Monica. 

She had finished her washing up, even to the 
dish-cloths, and leaned against the window, watch¬ 
ing the steady square of light thrown on the late- 
fallen snow. 

“Let us hope that they are not talking at all,” 
said Felix pleasantly. “There is an intimacy in 
silence which leads to understandings more often 
than not.” 

Monica cast him an anxious glance, her forehead 
puckered in affectionate concern. 

“You’re sure it’s best for them to come together 
after all? Marriage isn’t much of a life for a 
woman.” 

“No?” 

“Not if she has brains enough to think for her¬ 
self. Most haven’t. We’re poor trash. Oh, well, 
I don’t run the world! Sure that you won’t mind 
yourself?” 

“Mind what?” Felix regarded her with placid 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 159 


devilry. “Your running of the world or the pro¬ 
spective loss of ma belle amie? The first would 
probably overcome me. Under the latter I think 
I can bear up, thanking you all the same. Well, I 
suppose that it’s getting time for me to push off.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


Felix did not stay out his week-end. It was given 
him to perceive that his presence in Otway was 
superfluous, and he determined to try a little self- 
effacement as an antidote to past officiousness. 
For a time, therefore, he gave the little village a 
wide berth, and devoted himself to his own affairs. 
From time to time he wrote Jan brief, chatty letters 
to break the effect of desertion, but when the weeks 
trickled into months without bringing any reply he 
justly assumed that he was under a shadow which it 
must be trusted to time and Monica to remove. 
Philosophically he informed himself that he had 
the reward which a clear-sighted altruist should 
have expected, and possessed his soul in patience. 
From this state of placid resignation he was 
aroused by a brilliant meteor in the shape of little 
Mollie Desmond, who hurled herself upon him 
from the blue of a the dansant, and demanded to 
be taken aside for quiet talk. 

“Just anywhere, Felix, where we can talk and 
not be interrupted. I want you.” 

160 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 161 


“That is flattering,” Felix admitted. “What 
do you want me for?” 

“But what should I?” She stared at him with 
round eyes of innocence. “About Jan, of course.” 

Felix laughed and surrendered. As he had 
prophesied, he rather enjoyed his new reputation as 
a roue , but Mollie was too fine to practise his hand 
on. Instead, he became brotherly with the best 
grace in the world. 

“Well, I can’t give you any very recent news, 
I’m afraid. I haven’t been down to Otway for 
over a month.” 

“But you have been down there?” 

“Several times.” 

“Is it a nice place?” 

“A windy one. I should say it was rather beau¬ 
tiful in the summer-time. There is a cove which 
would give topping bathing, and the view is mag¬ 
nificent. Thinking of going down there?” 

“Jan won’t let me,” said Mollie regretfully. “I 
wrote and asked her to have me with her, but she 
said it wouldn’t do. Daddy would make such a 
frightful row. He doesn’t even like me writing to 
her. He seems to consider that Jan is divorced 
from the family as well as from Tony. Isn’t it 
beastly of him?” 


162 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“It’s one point of view,” Felix admitted. “But, 
you see, Jan agrees with him.” 

“She does,” said Mollie frankly, “and that’s 
beastly of her. I should be company for her if I 
couldn’t be anything else, and we could share my 
dress-allowance until it was gone, and then keep 
a shop. I know some girls who do that because 
their father is dead, and they earn quite a lot. 
But she only writes such short letters—not as if 
she wanted to tell one anything, but just the other 
way round. Do tell me everything, Fe! I’m 
not a child, whatever people say, and I won’t be 
treated as one. Do, do!” 

“Oh, very well,” Felix conceded gracefully, 
and proceeded to paint a picture of Jan’s existence 
which, if it erred slightly upon the rosy side, at 
least succeeded in rounding Mollie’s eyes to delft 
saucers, and parting her lips with quick, flutter¬ 
ing breaths. 

“No servants!” 

“It’s such a small house, you know,” Felix de¬ 
fended. “Only two rooms. There wouldn’t be 
room for one.” 

“But Jan can’t cook or wash, or do anything 
that servants do. She doesn’t know how to. Oh, 
how perfectly horrible!” Mollie wrung her hands 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 163 


in open despair. “I thought it might be bad, but 
never so bad as all that.” 

“It isn’t. Miss Stuart helps her a lot.” 

“Oh, I know, but what difference does that 
make?” 

Mollie broke off for a moment to detach the 
string of pearls from her soft throat and held them 
out. 

“They aren’t very large,” she acknowledged rue¬ 
fully, “but I’ve been meaning to send them down 
to Jan for ever so long. Will you take them, 
please? I didn’t dare to put them in the post, be¬ 
cause it would be so dreadful if they got lost, and 
I haven’t any others. But I want her to have them, 
and with all my love. Don’t forget that. It 
makes such a difference in giving presents—if one 
really means it.” 

“I don’t think Jan will take them.” Felix 
looked from the glowing face to the necklet with 
some embarrassment. 

“Oh, yes, she will,” Mollie nodded wisely. 
“Jan hates taking things, but it’s different with 
sisters. They belong together, and that makes it 
all right. Now do be a dear, Fe. I was counting 
on you.” 

And she kissed him to clinch the matter. 


164 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


Felix blinked a little under the warm impulsive¬ 
ness of the caress, blushed furiously, and returned 
it with some enthusiasm. This was slightly more 
than Mollie had bargained for. 

“Oh, I didn’t mean that!” said she. 

“Of course not. Nice kid, aren’t you? Well, 
I’ll put this through for you as well as I can. I 
say, aren’t they rather particular with you at home 
—more than with the others, I mean?” 

“Course they are, because they say I’m like Jan. 
I’m damn glad if I am!” Up went the valiant 
little head to mark the words. 

“So I see. Well, good luck, little girl!” 

“Good luck!” 

“For life. I never saw anyone so tiptoe for it; 
everything beginning, and the world so new and 
all. Well, I think so too, and I’m thirty. Shake 
hands, you bonny child!” 

“I’m not, and I don’t know what you’re talking 
about,” said Mollie, naively puzzled. She wa 9 
going, but swirled back, all the sweet immaturity 
of her tense. 

“I say, ain’t it piggish of daddy to go on taking 
money?” 

“Whose?” 

“Oh, you know what I mean. Jan was paying 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 165 


for Derek at Sandhurst, and Tony said he wanted 
that to go on just the same. Daddy lets it. Isn’t 
it hateful of him? And when we meet Tony we 
are supposed to speak as if nothing had happened. 
I won’t. Oh, I hate him!” 

“Money doesn’t cost anything to Lovatt,” said 
Felix drily, and Mollie coloured furiously. 

“Does that make it any better for us? It isn’t 
even as if we needed it really. It’s just greedi¬ 
ness, and not having any pride, and—oh, every¬ 
thing hateful!” 

“One is not supposed to criticise one’s parents,” 
said Felix dispassionately. “Everybody does it, 
of course. Don’t let me stop you. I shouldn’t 
pass on your information to Jan, though.” 

“As if I would! I’m not a fool. But I do hate 
things!” 

She was gone in a flurry of righteous indigna¬ 
tion, and Felix watched her retreating figure with 
eyes of thoughtful approval. 

For the following week he was kept in town by 
business, and, oddly enough, it was a chance meet¬ 
ing with Anthony which clinched his decision. 
Rather to his surprise, Anthony made no effort to 
avoid him; indeed, spoke to him on his own initia¬ 
tive; and for the first time Felix sensed the deep. 


166 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


almost overpowering nervousness beneath his 
armour of reserve. His voice was steady enough, 
but there was an indefinite impression of shrinking 
behind it. Felix guessed at the sensitiveness which 
bred it, and banished every trace of hostility from 
his own face. 

“You have not been seeing Jan lately, have 
you?” Anthony broke the ice with simple direct¬ 
ness. “Would you mind telling me why? You 
need not, of course, if you would rather not.” 

“Didn’t want to make trouble,” Felix explained 
amicably. “I’m rather good at doing that, aren’t 
I? It seemed simpler to stay away.” 

“I fancied that might be the reason.” Anthony 
found occasion to look away, and then added with 
something of an effort, “It would be very good of 
you to go down to her occasionally. I think she 
needs friends.” 

“I will!” Felix promised readily, and waited 
for more, certain that it was coming. 

“There’s another thing. I believe I ought to 
offer you an apology, if you care to accept it. I 
am nearly sure now that I had no reason to name 
you as a co-respondent. I suppose it is rather 
futile to ask you to forgive me for it, but I do t ” 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 167 


“Oh, that’s all right!” said Felix easily. “But 
I say, why-” 

“You tried to give Jan back to me. The two 
things didn’t fit.” 

Anthony paused as if for comment, and, receiv¬ 
ing none, turned away. 

“The world can’t help being mad,” said Felix 
philosophically. 

That afternoon he packed a handbag and took 
a train for Otway, wiring Monica to meet him at 
the station and turn him back if he was not wanted. 
It was impossible to reach Otway direct, and on the 
long train journey he found ample leisure to reflect 
upon Anthony’s sudden change of attitude. 

“First he has no utter use for me,” he com¬ 
plained bitterly. “Well, I don’t blame him for 
that. It was natural. Then he charges me with 
playing games with his wife. Well, that’s natural, 
too. I’m no saint, and Jan was made to be loved. 
Well, but if the fellow thought that why did he 
leave her alone, like a passion-flower blooming in 
the wilderness? If Uriah the Hittite was as slack 
in looking after Bathsheba-— No! Either he 
wasn’t interested in her at all, or else he knew 
he could trust her through thick and thin. So he 



168 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


could; but, then, why the divorce? Suddenly 
he won’t have anything more to do with her; will¬ 
ing to do anything to get free; tries to bribe her 
to keep away from him. Suppose I loved a 
woman, and she turned out to be a bad ’un, should 
I feel that way? Never having lost my head over 
one to any extent, can’t say, but suppose it’s on the 
cards. Well, why am I St. Anthony of Padua 
now? If they are reconciled that explains it, but, 
then, why hasn’t he brought Jan up to town? No, 
they can’t be reconciled. I’m cleared because of 
my open and manly bearing, but Jan isn’t. Why 
not? If he’s found anything more open and manly 
than Jan I should like to see it. This loving people 
is the very devil for messing up one’s powers of 
observation to the point where they are worth 
about threepence-halfpenny, or rather less. Damn 
it all, I won’t be St. Anthony if Jan is to go on pos¬ 
ing as the Scarlet Woman. I never heard of such 
rot. What I’m to do to prevent it I don’t for the 
moment see, but that will come.” 

The deserted country station brought Monica 
clad in a faded blue raincoat that had seen better 
days and a tam-o’-shanter pulled low over her hair. 
She greeted him without enthusiasm and eyed his 
bag with scorn. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 169 


“So you are coming down for a few days! We 
thought you were gone for good.” 

“When I am wanted,” Felix assured her with 
becoming gravity, “I can be depended on to appear 
like a conjurer’s white rabbit. Why didn’t you 
send for me?” 

Monica sniffed. 

Outside the station they took the narrow flinty 
road across the open country, Monica swinging 
along at his side with a long-limbed, easy step 
which it needed no shortening of stride to keep 
pace with. The afternoon was wearing into the 
clear amethyst of evening, fresh with the breath of 
rain. On every hand green buds were breaking 
out on the green country-side. Felix, snuffing up 
the air, found that it was good. 

“Well,” said Monica impatiently, “don’t you 
want to hear the news?” 

“No. Is there any?” Felix held her off for 
the pleasure of seeing her toss her head, but she 
countered with a question. 

“Why did you run away like that before? Not 
that we wanted you.” 

“I guessed that I was de trop” said Felix 
equably. “It appears that I’ve been whitewashed 
since, but— Well, what happened, anyway?” 


170 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Nothing much. I watched to see Jan’s light 
go out, but it was on practically all night. He 
left soon after you did, but I didn’t like to go in 
without being called. In the morning Jan’s eyes 
had big rings round them, but she didn’t seem to 
want to talk. She’s been different ever since; 
quieter and less ready to fly out about things. I 
think she cries at night. Then this man wrote to 
ask her if he might come down here to live, and 
she told him to go to hell and do what he damned 
well pleased, but except for that she hasn’t shown 
any spirit for weeks. It’s abominable. I wish he 
had stayed where he belonged and let us forget 
that he existed. Oh, I know that I told you to 
fetch him, but how was I to know what he was like? 
You told me that there was nothing radically wrong 
with him.” 

“So he’s down here?” 

“We don’t see much of him,” Monica admitted. 
“I think he only comes down for a few days a 
week, and then he keeps out of the way; but it’s 
bad enough to know he’s about. Why can’t he 
stay in London if he can’t do anything but make 
Jan miserable?” 

“I’ll propose to her again to-night,” Felix prom¬ 
ised cheerfully. “She has to get up her spirits to 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 171 


turn me down. It’s quite an exhilarating proceed¬ 
ing, and does her heaps of good. This will be the 
fourth time, which is not a lucky number, but no 
matter.” 

“Don’t you ever take anything seriously?” said 
Monica furiously. “You bring everything down 
to the level of an amusement. I hate you!” 

“Well, would you turn courtship into a tragedy?” 
Felix regarded her stern profile with dancing mis¬ 
chief. “One heart, one love, is overdoing it. 
Think of all the surplus women in Great Britain! 
Think of the correspondingly increased demand for 
romance! Why, your Unitarian ideas would upset 
the whole laws of supply and demand. Think of 
all the tender maiden hearts which but for me had 
never known the thrill of unrequited passion. Are 
they the worse for it? Not they. I have loved 
them, and they have a hair of my scalp to dangle 
through eternity. When I am bald I will abstain, 
but not till then.” 

“And in that case I suppose some poor woman is 
to put up with your exceedingly second-hand de¬ 
votion, and say nothing. ‘My wife, poor wretch.’ 
I should rather think so!” 

“Not at all. I shall come to her with all the 
benefits of experience. It is no compliment to a 


172 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


goddess to tumble upon her notice, and woo her 
like an undergraduate.” 

“And it was by acting upon that code that you 
got Jan divorced, I suppose?” 

“I did,” Felix was suddenly grave. “That is 
going to be the lasting regret of my life. I was 
going to say that I had never broken a heart, but 
I believe I have—Lovatt’s. And yet God knows 
I wouldn’t have hurt either of them if I’d seen 
what was happening, instead of blundering straight 
ahead like a silly fool.” 

“Or if you had only hurt him I shouldn’t care.” 
Monica sniffed. “Men are devils!” 

“Yes?” Felix regained his twinkle on the in¬ 
stant. “How many do you know?” 

“What’s that got to do with it? If you only 
knew one guinea-pig, and it was a devil of a 
guinea-pig-” 

“I see. May I ask if I-” 

“Oh, you don’t count!” 

“Thanks. So Lovatt is the fiend in porcine 
form. Any others?” 

“I don’t know. That’s enough, isn’t it? Any¬ 
way, they are. I don’t see why I should bother to 
be logical about a thing I know perfectly well.” 

Abruptly she relaxed to laughter. 




THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 173 


Jan was sitting on the cottage gate when they 
reached it. Her glossy head was bare, and her 
woolly jacket made much of her lithe boyishness. 

She dropped her work at their approach, swung 
herself down, and came to meet them, candid 
friendliness in her eyes. 

“What an age you have been away!” said she 
frankly. “I thought I was never going to see you 
again, Felix.” 

She gave him her hands. 

“Oh, yes, you are forgiven,” she added, in an¬ 
swer to the unspoken question. “That is to say, I 
forgive you what you said for the sake of what you 
didn’t. Come into the house, my dears.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


Rather to Felix’s surprise, Jan accepted Mollie’s 
gift without demur. She took it in her hands 
laughing a little, hesitated, fingering the pearls, 
and then put them down very gently and raised 
her head. 

“I think this is too sweet to refuse,” she said 
seriously. “Yes, I am sure it is. There—there 
are some very nice people in the world, Felix.” 

“And some very nasty ones.” 

“Yes.” Jan admitted that instantly. “And 
the nasty ones are always with us, like the poor.” 

She did not elaborate the statement, although 
he waited for her to do so. Presently she referred 
to the pearls again. 

“I shall keep them for the next emergency,” 
she said thoughtfully. “I suppose I have been 
frightfully extravagant, but I’ve only got a little 
over three pounds left as a reserve fund, and it 
isn’t enough to be safe. Illness is so frightfully 
extravagant, and—and badly regulated. I was 
174 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 175 


never ill before, when I could afford to be, and 
now, when I simply can’t-” 

“Oh, Lord!” said Felix aghast. 

“But, of course, lots of people are like that,” 
said Jan, in a matter-of-fact voice, “only one 
doesn’t know. In the old days one didn’t think 
of illness as frightening, just as unpleasant; and 
then there is growing old, too, only it is rather 
early to start bothering about that.” 

“I should rather think so. What is your age, 
by the way? Twenty-two?” 

“Twenty-three; but I’ve no one but myself to 
depend on for ever and ever, and things must get 
worse with me instead of better, so if I don’t save 
now I never shall. When I look at the end of the 
road it’s bleak. Am I being morbid, Felix?” 

“No. Tell me all of it,” said Felix gently. 
“Nightmares die when you drag them into the day¬ 
light, little girl. I’m here to listen.” 

Jan crossed the room and stood in front of him, 
her hands clasped behind her back, her chin at an 
angle, the wide, clear eyes oddly childlike in spite 
of the shadows beneath them. 

“Oh, you arm-chair, Felix! Well, if you like 
I really believe it would help. You see, when I 
was in London, before I came down here, I spent 



176 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


my time trying to find out what happened to 
divorced women in the long run. It wasn’t a very 
cheerful occupation, was it, but it fascinated me, 
and—well, I did. There was a woman I met by 
accident. She didn’t mind talking to me, and I 
was very hard up for people to talk to. She 
seemed to know a lot about it. They marry mostly, 
of course, and then there are the ones who—just 
live in flats; and the others who live in bed-sitting- 
rooms on pensions from the relatives who won’t 
see them. At first, of course, a few people are 
interested and sympathetic, but that dulls after 
a time, when one is only the scandal of the year 
before last. Ten years hence, you see, you will be 
married, and your wife isn’t very likely to approve 
of me, is she? And Mollie will be married, and 
her husband is certain not to; and Tony will be 
married—not that that will make any difference; 
and Monica—I don’t know about Monica. But 
you will all be going forward, and I can’t very 
well, can I? It isn’t even as if there were some¬ 
thing to look forward to, or something else to live 
for and fight for, as I suppose there would have 
been if—if—” Jan coloured vividly and stam¬ 
mered over the sentence. “You see, I’ve got 
to be a divorced woman without any of the di- 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 177 


vorced woman’s equipment. I can’t be brazeil, 
and I won’t be humble, and the only love possible 
is behind me. One has to go on, of course, but 
it’s damnably difficult sometimes. Felix, you are 
an angel to listen to me like this. I’m finished! 
I’ve whined enough for one morning, and I must 
do some work, anyway.” 

“Half a minute! I want to know about Lovatt. 
Jan, how are things between you?” 

“They aren’t.” Jan stared away with set lips. 
“He wants to be generous. He loves me well 
enough to take me back—as a wanton—forgiven— 
I can’t talk about it.” 

“Are you on speaking terms?” 

“Oh, yes, but we hardly ever meet. He has a 
house down here now. I wish he would go away. 
If you speak to him, Felix, you might persuade 
him that it’s no good staying. It really isn’t. I’d 
rather be left alone.” 

“Sure, Jan?” 

“Quite sure. That side of my life is finished 
with. I want everything or nothing now, and I 
can’t have everything. Don’t let’s talk about it 
any more.” 

“Oh, very well,” said Felix reluctantly. “But 
I wish you could be happy, you know.” 


178 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“I know you do,” said Jan softly. 

She sat down on the arm of his chair, her arm 
flung lightly round his shoulders. 

“Felix, it’s pleasant—pleasant to be a sister to 
you, and what a dog in the manger I am becom¬ 
ing! For, honestly, though I will not have you 
myself, I cannot endure the thought of parting with 
you to another woman, unless-” 

She had been speaking lightly, and gently pull¬ 
ing his hair as she talked. Now, of a sudden, 
her eyes, resting on his, lit up with a quick sparkle 
of understanding. 

“Oh, Felix, of course. How perfectly splendid! 
Why ever didn’t you tell me before?” 

“She wouldn’t look at me,” said Felix stoutly. 
“Why do you suggest such ideas to my innocent 
head?” 

“I didn’t. You thought of it first. I saw you 
do it. I am so glad! The one woman in the 
world who is nice enough to deserve you; and, if 
you can be improved, I am sure that it will im¬ 
prove you enormously to fall in love. Tell me 
honestly, when did you think of it first?” 

“A moment ago—a fraction of a second before 
you did. This is a very amazing experience, and 
I shall have to get used to it. She is the very 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 179 


antithesis of all that I admire in women, and yet 
—Well, I must think about it.” 

“Do!” said Jan gleefully. “There is a great 
deal in thinking; but I have more than a suspicion 
that nature has settled this matter in advance. 
Think, Felix, think!” 

“You look like conspirators, you two!” said 
Monica, entering a quarter of an hour later. “I 
wonder what you find so important to talk about? 
And, of course, neither of you would think to light 
the lamp.” 


CHAPTER XV 


Felix was no ordinary man. He did not allow 
the new possibilities suddenly opened before him 
to obscure his interest in old issues. If anything 
was to suffer for his preoccupation his work was 
obviously the destined sacrifice, and, instead of 
living in town and visiting Otway at intervals, he 
reversed the procedure, and ran up to London 
two days a week, devoting the remainder of his 
time to whimsical courtship. For obvious rea¬ 
sons, this presented difficulties. Monica, at the 
very outset, gave him clearly to understand that 
she did not propose to allow her spinster existence 
to be gladdened by thrills of romantic ardour. 
At the very suggestion she grew glacial and vin¬ 
dictive. 

“The woman is a positive north wind!” he 
complained bitterly to his ready confidante. “We 
are going to be fiendishly uncomfortable if ever 
we do manage to get married.” 

“That will be so good for you, dear!” said Jan 
180 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 181 


heartlessly, and Felix flung away in what was, for 
him, a close approach to a huff*. 

In the intervals of his wooing he found time 
to improve his acquaintance with Anthony, and 
here he was met half-way, even finding shy ad¬ 
vances in return. Anthony was an enigma, and 
Felix, lighted on his quest by that one flash of 
insight granted in London, settled to the problem 
with zest. 

Jan commented on this with a twinkle which 
hid a deeper current of seriousness. 

“Just how much are you growing to like that 
quondam husband of mine, Felix?” 

“I hardly know myself,” Felix confessed. 
“I’m dining with him to-night, as it happens. Do 
you mind, child?” 

“Of course not. Why should I?” Jan hesitated 
a moment, and wriggled her finger against the 
comer of her mouth, a pet mannerism of hers 
when at a loss to express a thought. 

“Felix, you won’t—won’t tell him things, will 
you?” 

“What things?” 

“That I—oh, you know—not that I do; but, 
anyway, you won’t?” 

“I don’t know,” said Felix dubiously. “Jan, 


182 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


hasn’t it ever struck you that it might make a lot 
of difference to a fellow to know that you cared 
for him? In fact, it might make all the dif¬ 
ference.” 

“It might.” Jan’s bright face was grim. “It 
might, for instance, put him on his honour to 
take me back. Felix, can’t you understand? 
That one wretched little bit of me is the only thing 
that hasn’t been wrenched away and fingered by 
everybody who had an interest in it. I can bear 
to be despised for a lie—that’s all in a day’s 
work; but to be pitied, and for the truth—not 
that!” 

“Well, of course I can do nothing without your 
permission,” Felix admitted grudgingly. 

He did not see his way to carrying the point, but 
in his own mind he felt certain that Jan was wrong, 
and that a little pride would be well expended in 
the cause of understanding. That, however, was 
a matter of character. Jan would not have been 
the clean, brave fighter she was if she had ever 
found it possible to bend her stiff little neck and 
confess to the wounds which were draining her 
strength. To her their very existence was less a 
sorrow than a corroding shame. Love should 
have died with faith; it had not; but let it seem to 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 183 


die, and she could turn the same unflinching face 
to the enemy, confident in their blindness as in 
her own valiant hypocrisy. 

Something of this Felix understood, and 
admired even in disagreement, though his own 
easier philosophy chafed under the restraint. 
Here were two people who had lived together and 
held by each other, who were still more to each 
other than is usual with most married couples, 
held apart by circumstance and the belief in a 
lie, or, to be exact, in a chain of lies. Felix was 
honest enough to admit to himself that wives had 
been divorced on less evidence than had been 
marshalled against Jan and yet had not been 
entirely innocent; but he denied that that seriously 
affected the issue. Belief, he stoutly main¬ 
tained, was not a matter for evidence; if one knew 
and loved the soul in a woman’s eyes she might 
be free to compromise herself how and when she 
would. So far Felix the sentimentalist; but be¬ 
yond that he became practical. He acknowledged 
that he had allowed himself to become prejudiced 
by constant study of one side of the question. 
Remained Anthony’s. 

Anthony, with a consideration which Monica 
would have hotly denied him, had installed him- 


184 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


self at the further end of the village, in a bunga¬ 
low belonging to people who only used it occasion¬ 
ally for the summer half of the year, and who had 
been even more astonished than pleased at the 
prospect of letting it for the spring. It was a 
gimcrack, typically-seaside affair, of much white 
woodwork in crying need of a coat of paint, and 
a windswept garden, ragged and uncared-for; but 
a tumble-down boathouse giving on an inlet of 
calmer water promised possibilities; and indoors 
Anthony had imported enough of his own sur¬ 
roundings to strike a contrast of pleasant luxury. 

Felix surveying the sitting-room, where chintz 
had given place to carpet and hangings of deep soft 
blue, and wicker was exchanged for dark oak, 
approved the effect, but doubted whether the 
trouble of transplantation was worth while. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Anthony vaguely. 
He was wandering about the room like an aimless 
ghost. “I buy so many things, you see, and I 
haven’t anywhere to put them really. I wish I 
could find a dealer who couldn’t talk. They all 
make one take things one doesn’t want, and sound 
so plausible about it. I don’t think I like this 
chair much.” 

He was fingering a gorgeous Spanish seat, his 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 185 

brows creased in an anxious frown, and as he 
spoke he raised troubled, dark eyes, as if expect¬ 
ing sympathy in its possession. 

“All this inlaid work is rather showy, don’t you 
think? I wonder why I bought it.” 

“Not to sit in, I should imagine,” Felix opined, 
with a gleam of humour. “One might possibly 
put a cushion over each end and lie upon it, but 
even then-” 

“I know. It isn’t comfortable. That stamped 
leather one is Spanish, too. I suppose,” he added, 
with a sudden spurt of irritation, “that only fools 
allow themselves to be saddled with things they 
don’t want.” 

“That’s rather sweeping,” Felix disagreed, his 
judgment hampered by the memory of certain un¬ 
fortunate bargains of his own. 

He was studying the man before him with quiet 
curiosity, and found him interesting. 

Anthony was of about his own height, but of 
much slighter build; all long limbs and attenuated 
body, and he moved lightly, with a suspicion of 
jerkiness which hinted at overstrung nerves. His 
complexion was unusually dark for an English¬ 
man, and the fine features too large for good looks, 
suggested an American somewhere in his family 



186 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


tree. His speaking voice was soft and pleasant, 
rather inclined to drawl and blur over the end of 
a sentence, as if he himself had lost immediate 
interest in it, and he talked readily, with a sort 
of shy deference which coming to a man no older 
than himself was oddly attractive. 

“I wanted to go into the Navy once,” he said, 
in answer to a casual question. “They wouldn’t 
have me, of course. I never got past the first 
interview. I remember they asked me what ani¬ 
mals ate grass, and I was so nervous that I thought 
they said ‘Admirals.’ It seemed such a silly sort 
of question to ask that I simply blushed and 
stammered at them. And so they wouldn’t have 
me. It was almost the same thing during the 
war. I did manage to get sent to the front, but 
then all my regiment was cut to pieces while I 
was in the hospital with measles.” 

The soft, unhumorous voice left Felix in doubt 
as to whether or no it would be tactful to laugh 
at the tragic Odyssey, and he refrained with an 
effort. 

“It would not have mattered so much if it had 
been anything serious,” said Anthony wistfully. 
“I suppose you-” 

“Oh, I had luck.” 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 187 


Felix might also have added that he had earned 
distinctions, but he was unwilling to divert the 
trickle of reminiscences. Already he glimpsed 
the intense natural humility lying beneath the 
mask of quiet reserve, guessed that it was the 
keynote of the puzzle, and put out cautious feelers 
to probe its source. 

Already the growing insight explained much 
which had been darkness. Groping for a fuller 
knowledge of the truth he was tempted to a bold 
attack. True, he knew little of Anthony, but it 
is often easier to give up one’s secrets to a stranger 
than to a proved friend. Felix had a peculiarly 
soothing quality of mind which had frequently 
lured the barest acquaintances into unexpected 
confidences, and he knew that Anthony at least 
had already come under its influence and counted 
on it not a little in attempting to break down 
his armour of reticence. 

It was not till they had finished dinner, and 
were sitting over their coffee before a small wood 
fire, that he broached the subject, leaning down 
as he did so to flick his cigarette-ash against the 
edge of the tray, and so find an excuse for avert¬ 
ing his eyes. 

“By the way, Lovatt, from what you said in 


188 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


London I gather that I am no longer—well, under 
suspicion, as it were?” 

“Good Lord, no!” Anthony flushed darkly, and 
his thin hand clenched itself in a sudden nervous 
jerk. “I hope you haven’t been thinking that 
I—I say, you make me feel several different 
sorts of cad!” 

“Why?” said Felix. He straightened himself, 
and smiled up at his host with his natural frank 
charm. “Look here, you acquitted me on the 
flimsiest evidence, you know. Say I was the 
rotter you once thought. Why shouldn’t I have 
been living with Jan ever since the divorce, got 
tired of her and tried to work her off on you? 
That’s a theory that covers all the facts, isn’t it?” 

“It doesn’t cover the persons,” said Anthony, in 
a low voice. “Oh, need we talk about all this? 
I have apologised.” 

“Yes, to me. What about Jan?” 

“Jan?” 

“Oh, you haven’t acquitted her?” 

“No. Royd, I refuse to discuss my wife with 
you or anybody. I know you mean to help, but 
it can’t do any good.” 

“Oh, yes, it can,” said Felix inexorably. “I 
know I’m taking unfair advantage of my position, 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 189 


but that’s a detail, and you’ll listen because you 
owe it to me. Also, you owe it to her; but I’m 
appealing on the first count. Look here! Your 
contention is that Jan is an utter rotter, yet when 
she was on the rocks, directly after the divorce, 
I asked her to marry me, and she refused. Of 
course, my income looks rather paltry after yours, 
but still, I can afford to keep a wife in comfort. 
Remember what Jan was facing, and then tell me 
how many women would have had the courage 
to turn their backs upon a way of escape and walk 
out into the world with practically nothing be¬ 
hind them but a bad name.” 

“Oh, don’t!” Anthony implored. “It isn’t any 
use going over the old ground, indeed it isn’t.” 

“I insist on going over it, and I have the right 
to if I like. You’ve got to admit that. Eight 
months ago you accused us two of certain things. 
Now you are prepared to withdraw that so far as 
I am concerned. Well, unless you withdraw it 
against Jan too, it isn’t good enough, and I shall 
go on talking. To prevent mistakes I don’t mind 
saying, to start with, that there was nothing wrong 
between us; but there might have been. For 
months I was on the edge of being in love with 
Jan. If she had asked me to run away with her 


190 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


I think I would have done it. She didn’t. Oh, 
I’m not trying to argue that I was any particular 
temptation, but your contention is that Jan was 
loose—anybody’s for the picking up. How do 
you account for the way she’s living now, in the 
most cramped poverty? You know perfectly 
well that she isn’t used to it; nor is she ascetic 
enough to enjoy it; nor is it necessary. Beauty 
like Jan’s is always marketable, so is the notoriety 
you have so kindly given her. Do you suppose 
for one moment that she has lived through these 
months untempted? And now she has nothing to 
lose by giving in, as she had when she was your 
wife. How do you explain that she is straight 
now if she was crooked then? Remorse? Does 
Jan act like a remorseful woman or like a defiant 
and injured one? Doesn’t she carry her head up 
and look the whole world in the face like the 
valiant little gentleman nature meant her to be in 
the first place? Hasn’t she got the cleanest, 
straightest eyes on God’s earth?” 

“She has,” said Anthony drearily. “But you 
don’t understand.” 

“What?” 

“It was my fault.” Anthony ignored the 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 191 


question, and substituted one of his own. “What 
reason did Jan give for refusing you?” 

“The idiotic one that it wouldn’t be fair to 
me. As I pointed out to her then and since, she’s 
no more tarred and feathered than I am, but she 
sticks to her point.” 

“She’s right,” said Anthony thoughtfully. 
“And it’s like Jan.” 

“It is, but it’s not like the woman you divorced.” 

“You don’t understand,” Anthony repeated 
patiently, “I never said that Jan was not the 
sweetest, bravest thing God ever made. She just 
lacks the moral sense. It’s not her fault. It’s 
mine. I shouldn’t have let her marry me to please 
her people as she did. Oh, I don’t mean that 
they beat her into it! I’m not such a fool as that. 
But they did persuade her, and flung us together 
on every possible occasion. She didn’t want to 
marry me at all, but I knew that her people could 
be trusted to make her do it, and I wanted her 
so. If she had hated me it would have been 
different, but at the time she was willing to accept 
the things I could give her, and it seemed all 
right; but how could a child like that know what 
it meant? I don’t think she had ever even kissed a 


192 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


man before she met me, and I’m not the sort 
a girl could ever care for much. I knew what 
we were doing, and those greedy, fatuous people 
who pushed her into it knew, but Jan was simply 
the innocent little sacrifice led to the slaughter in 
lace and orange blossoms. Perhaps she thought 
that was all there was in a marriage! She was 
too young to know what she was doing, and she 
was afraid of me. Jan! My little Jan! She 
had no cause to be, after the first. I left her alone. 
But I ought to have known that Jan couldn’t live 
without love. It wasn’t natural. Why, she was 
simply made for it. And mine was no use, be¬ 
cause I had married her. I couldn’t ask with¬ 
out seeming to claim a right. I had to let her 
go free.” 

“If you thought that why divorce her at all?” 

“I don’t know. Something snapped in me. I 
couldn’t go on putting up with it. It was such a 
ghastly form of hell, pretending to live with Jan 
when I was the only man who didn’t. What was 
the use, anyway? I wasn’t keeping her straight. 
I wasn’t doing anything for her except pay her 
bills, and I thought she would let me do that after 
the divorce. Man, can’t you realise what it is to 
look on, and know, when one loves a woman more 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 193 


than one’s own soul? I bore it for a year. I 
don’t know how, except that I hoped that, when she 
was through with Holland, she might turn to me 
to be comforted. Oh, I’m proud! I hoped that. 
I lived on the thought for months, and instead, 
with hardly a break-” 

He turned sharply away, leaving the sentence 
unfinished. The inquisitor reached for another 
instrument. 

“There were three charges. You withdraw one. 
Six months ago were you any surer of the other 
two? Isn’t your faith in your own judgment 
the least little bit shaken? Don’t you feel the 
smallest doubt that where you were wrong once 
you may have been wrong twice? I should if 
I were you. Think of all you knew of Jan. You 
were with her for three years. Did you ever find 
her doing anything mean, or underhand, or sor¬ 
did?” 

“Oh, can’t you be quiet! I’ve told you what 
I think.” 

“You have, and it doesn’t convince me in the 
least. Why do you think Jan consents to be poor 
now?” 

“She might be—in love.” 

“She might; but if you’re running to supposi- 



194 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


tions imagine something else. Isn’t it conceivably 
possible that you were wrong from beginning to 
end?” 

“I wasn’t.” 

“It isn’t possible?” 

“No. I loved her. Do you think I wanted to 
believe it?” 

“I think you are too erratic and nerve-ridden 
to judge plain facts. Look here, when you were 
a kid didn’t you drive yourself into fits by imagin¬ 
ing things in the dark, see things crawling in 
every patch of shadow? I believe that from the 
moment you married Jan you were in a panic at 
the idea of losing her, and got the jumps when¬ 
ever she spoke to another man. Weren’t you on 
the watch every minute of the day? And do you 
suppose there is a woman living who can go under 
the microscope like that for years on end without 
showing a single indiscretion, much less Jan, the 
lovely little flibberty-gibbet. I don’t believe she 
cares twopence who steals her gloves or makes 
eyes at her, or lines up in a queue to dance with 
her, so long as they point their toes properly. 
She doesn’t take it seriously. Have you never 
seen her eyes twinkle when she was being made 
love to? She likes it; but I don’t believe she ever 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 195 


did any harm, even in play. The only time I 
ever tried to be serious with her she pulled my 
hair and told me to try it on Anne Trensham. Of 
course, you saw what you looked to see, but you 
saw all there was. I’d pawn my soul to the devil 
on that.” 

“But if that’s true—” Anthony stared straight 
before him with unseeing eyes. “If I divorced 
Jan for nothing there’s no place in hell for me. 
And yet I was sure—sure. But if it’s not true— 
But it was—it was!” 

“Ah! Now you want to believe it.” 

“Want to!" 

“You are,” said Felix judicially, “rather good 
at believing what you like.” 

He rose to his feet, conscious that he had 
already done his utmost. The seed of doubt was 
sown, and bade fair to flourish. There was 
nothing to be done except to leave well alone and 
allow it to grow. 


CHAPTER XVI 


Jan was a born procrastinator, and, as Felix had 
said, there was no Spartan strain in her to 
challenge hardships. When Anthony discovered 
her scrubbing the floor of her kitchen she was 
humming the “Marseillaise” with vindictive en¬ 
ergy, and frowning blackly at the soapsuds. 
She looked up at him, her lips still pursed, her 
face flushed with long stooping. 

“Oh!” she said, and regarded him with con¬ 
tracted eyebrows. “Very well, you can come in 
if you like, and if your dignity will allow you 
to sit on the table, otherwise I haven’t room for 
you.” 

And she made onslaught on the boards. 

Anthony obediently seated himself as directed, 
and gathered up his long limbs under him to be 
out of the way, linking his arms round his knees 
and resting his chin upon them as he watched her 
with sombre eyes. 

“Why do you have to scrub floors, Jan?” 

“Because they would get dirty if I didn’t, dear 
196 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 197 

man. Really, Tony, that question is hardly up to 
your usual elliptical style. I don’t do it often.” 

“You know I didn’t mean that.” 

“Didn’t you? Well, what did you mean then? 
I’m too busy to study out the double entente this 
morning.” 

“You needn’t. It’s quite simple. I want to 
know why I am not allowed to provide for you. 
It’s usual, you know.” 

“Is it? I abominate the usual! Besides”— 
Jan swept her soapsuds before her in a venomous 
onslaught—“I have so few expenses.” 

“I suppose you hate me too much to take any¬ 
thing from me. Is that it?” 

“P’r’aps. Do you expect me to love you, Tony? 
I haven’t much in common with Griselda, you 
know.” 

“And even Griselda wasn’t set to wash floors,” 
Anthony admitted gloomily. 

“You are a materialist, you know.” Jan sat 
back on her heels, her small, work-roughened 
hands clasped between her knees, her head at an 
angle, very much like a questioning sparrow. “It 
worries you that I should do my own housework 
and occasionally go short of things to eat; yet you 
bore the thought of my alternative career with 


198 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


silent fortitude. So noble of you! Don’t you 
like to know that I have repented, Tony?” 

“Have you?” 

“Of course.” Jan’s eyes made brilliant mock 
of him. “I am so sorry for my offences, Tony 
dear. To err is human, but to throw away a 
perfectly good husband and a handsome income 
was little less than wasteful. I think I feel like 
discussing a reconciliation—so much down, and 
the rest to be paid in instalments. Irreproach¬ 
able behaviour guaranteed while the payment is 
going on, but immediate backsliding on the re¬ 
ceipt of full purchase money. Tony, you hypo¬ 
crite, get out of my demoralising kitchen before 
I begin to make love to you. The truth is that 
I can’t be trusted with a man about the house, 
only, of course, you know that.” 

“I’m not a man,” said Anthony bitterly, “I had 
once the honour to be your husband.” 

“But that only gives a spice to it,” said Jan, 
maliciously conscious of her power to wound, and 
savouring a novel enjoyment in the exercise. 
“I’m afraid you don’t find me pretty this morn¬ 
ing, dear, but, then, I didn’t know you were 
coming, did I? Will you wait while I run up¬ 
stairs to brush my hair and take off my apron, 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 199 


and generally repair the ravages of time and 
absence? I can’t be properly depraved in sack¬ 
ing. The association of ideas is all wrong. Oh, 
Tony, it is a delight to me to see you writhe! 
I’ve writhed so often myself for your benefit, and 
to get a little of it back-” 

“You have a beautiful nature, haven’t you?” 

“I like to pay my debts,” Jan owned, with quiet 
satisfaction. She leaned against the table and 
eyed him beneath drooping lashes, paying them 
with a lavish hand. 

“To have and to hold,” she murmured re¬ 
flectively. “What a nice, safe, permanent sound 
there is about the wedding service—almost as if 
it was intended to last for ever, instead of only 
for three years. How horrible if you had really 
been tied to me for ever, Tony—for ever and a 
day—or is it only till death? I forget. In any 
case it doesn’t matter, as you’re not. You’ve 
been biting your lip, Tony! So silly of you! 
It’s always open to you to go if you don’t care 
for my conversation. Well, I won’t make love 
to you if you dislike the idea so much as all that, 
but we needn’t talk of money either. I never 
imagined I had any special claim on your bank- 
balance, you know. That was a case of ‘The Lord 



200 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


giveth and the Lord taketh away.’ What I do 
grudge you are the things which were never yours 
in the first instance, such as my home, and the 
friends I once thought I had, and my reputation. 
You had a right to turn me out of the house, Tony 
—after all, it was your house—but you had no 
right to make me a bank holiday show.” 

“I know,” said Anthony wretchedly. 

He stared at her, seeing with aching vividness 
the new shadows beneath the fearless eyes, the 
harder, older lines of the sweet mouth. Where 
the neck joined the shoulder he saw for the first 
time a faint line advertising the collar-bone, an 
angle replacing the round curve of the shoulder. 
The cheap material of her dress revealed every¬ 
where a growing sharpness of outline. The little, 
roughened hands were red from long immersion, 
and still glistening with the soapy water. As one 
trying to piece out a manuscript in a foreign lan¬ 
guage, he groped for realisation of what the divorce 
had cost her, and found himself stumbling into 
muttered excuses, all sense of injury completely 
swamped by the thought of her suffering, plead¬ 
ing that he had been unable to think at all, still 
less foresee consequences; that had it been other- 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 201 


wise he would never have made any public charge 
against her; would rather have shifted the blame, 
and allowed her to divorce him. 

Jan listened, her eyes dwelling thoughtfully on 
his, and then shook her head. 

“No Tony, never that. I have my faults, 
heaven knows, but I don’t count hypocrisy among 
them—faked charges, and alimony, and white¬ 
wash; the odour of sanctity, and all the rest of 
it! No, thank you, not for me! I’d rather walk 
to hell on my own feet than squirm into the other 
place by those ignoble little compromises. You 
don’t know much of me, do you? Or I of you, 
if it comes to that. I once thought, you know, that 
you had manufactured a case to get rid of me 
because you wanted my place for someone else.” 

“Jan!” 

“Yes, it wasn’t a very high-minded suspicion, 
but it has been done, you know, and I didn’t think 
that you could really believe that I— Oh, I for¬ 
got! I’m pleading guilty this morning, so, to 
be logical, I suppose I ought to forgive you for 
believing it.” 

“I’ll believe anything you like,” said Anthony 
suddenly. 


202 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Oh!” Jan raised her eyebrows at him. “And 
for how long?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“I do. For just so long as you can see and 
touch, and not one second longer. I hypnotise 
you, don’t I, Tony? It must have cost you a lot 
to get free of me. Ten thousand? Something 
like that. Permanent blacking is expensive; and 
yet you are willing to waste all that, and throw 
your emancipation to the four winds while it is 
still comparatively fresh, for the sake of a pink 
and white skin and a scraggy body. You are 
like the farmer and the weather, never knowing 
what you want. Six months ago you offered me 
money not to pester you, and now, because a man 
can only value a thing when he hasn’t got it, and 
because you recollect that I have eyes like tea¬ 
cups and lips indifferently red, and all the rest 
of it, you are willing to promise anything to get 
back what you once threw away—yes, even to 
promise to believe in it. And so you will, per¬ 
haps, until the next time-” 

“Jan, stop!” 

Anthony uncurled himself from the table and 
caught her wrists with a grip for once ungentle. 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 203 

“What do you think I’m made of, to stand 
that?” 

“I shall say what I like,” panted Jan. 

She stood erect and flushed, her eyes sparkling 
defiance of man and all his works. After a mo¬ 
ment she turned away, wrenching at her apron- 
strings, rolled the coarse sacking into a hard ball 
and tossed it into the comer of the room; then 
paused, considering it as if it were some natural 
phenomenon, her head bent. 

“Very well, Tony!” she said at last. “I’m 
going on talking, but not quite in the same way. 
For instance, I shall begin like that.” 

She bent forward and kissed him swiftly, then 
sprang away, her hands held out to ward off any 
return. 

“No, Tony, that was only to show you that I 
forgive you for divorcing me. At least I think 
I do. That’s the first point. I’m not going to 
deny that thing again. I never shall. You can 
think what you like. What will that be, by the 
way?” 

“Can there be any doubt?” said Anthony in¬ 
distinctly. 

“Yes, there can. Lots. If you remember, 


204 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


Othello wasn’t in the least pleased to discover that 
he was wrong in the same circumstances. He 
couldn’t bring his corpse to life again, and you 
can’t make people believe that I’m a good woman. 
Divorce is one of the things that can’t be put 
right afterwards. Yes, of course you can remarry 
me. That’s easy enough. A new wedding-ring 
—even you aren’t rich enough to dredge all the 
mud in London and get back our old one—and 
a very quiet wedding in a registrar’s office, as I 
can’t be married in a church, and what then? 
Everybody will say that I have been forgiven. 
Forgiven! As a matter of fact, I shall have been. 
You offered to forgive me, didn’t you, Tony? I 
suppose, when I am a married woman again, 
decent people will be inclined to tolerate me. 
That’ll be nice, won’t it? So much for the out¬ 
siders. Then what about ourselves? I gather 
that you intend to do violence to your intelligence 
and grub out your old belief in me, and put it 
on like an old coat that will do just a time or two 
longer. It has seen its best days, hasn’t it? And 
even at its best I have seen better garments. Do 
you think it will stand the wear and tear of our 
life together any better than it did? I haven’t 
altered, you know. I shall not be more circum- 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 205 


spect than I was, and I have lost my self-respect; 
and suspicion is like cancer for being always 
ready to break out in a new place. What are we 
going to do the next time you doubt me, Tony? 
I can’t go on protesting for ever! More than that, 
I feel now that I couldn’t do with the ordinary 
amount of trust. I need it too much. Do you 
realise even dimly what these months have been 
to me? No, I see you don’t, or you wouldn’t 
harp so much on the food question. Why, I’d live 
on bread and water for a year if it would get me 
back the trust of the people I care for. One or 
two have stuck to me in spite of everything, and 
I feel that I could kiss their feet. Felix is one, 
Monica is another—but you’re not made like 
that. You are out of funds in the one currency I 
care to accept. You can only say that you be¬ 
lieve in a half-hearted voice, and take me back. 
My dear, that isn’t good enough.” 

Anthony dropped his eyes to the floor, and stood 
eyeing his boot with preternatural interest. 

“There would be—other things,” he said in a 
low voice. 

“Other things? Yes, I suppose there would 
be, but they don’t impress me, you know. Have 
you the moon, dear sir? No, but I have a Dutch 


206 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


cheese, which is twice as nourishing and not so 
hard to come by. Tony, I have called you a 
materialist already, but why is it the aim of your 
existence to get me to regard you as an animated 
cheque-book?” 

“It’s all I’m good for,” said Anthony bitterly. 
“Ah!” 

Jan rolled down her sleeves over her bare fore¬ 
arms, and sat down, considering him gravely with 
her chin in her hand. 

“I promised not to make love to you, didn’t 
I?” she said suddenly, with seeming irrelevance. 
“If I did you wouldn’t believe me, I suppose. 
Well, is there anything else you want to say be¬ 
fore you go?” 

“There are one or two questions I should like 
to ask you.” 

Jan laughed, 

“Oh, Tony, I might have known it! You are a 
question-mark as well as a cheque-book after all. 
Well, what is it?” 

“I wish you would trust me, Jan,” said Anthony 
wistfully. 

He moved over to her chair and stood beside 
her, clenching and unclenching his nervous hands. 

“Why can’t you, dear? In—in the old days I 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 207 


used to pray that you would come to trust me 
some time and let me do things for you, but 
you never did. Doesn’t it—doesn’t it mean any¬ 
thing to you that I would sell my soul to buy you 
shoes?” 

“It means something,” Jan admitted slowly. 
“What do you want me to tell you?” 

“Is there nothing I could do for you—nothing 
you are keeping from me?” 

“That I don’t intend to let you know? Yes.” 

For a moment Anthony was silent, fingering the 
back of her chair as if the grain of the wood held 
absorbing interest, stealing from time to time 
swift, tentative glances at his wife’s bowed head, 
as if unable either to meet her eyes or to keep 
his own from her. 

“Have you ever loved anyone, Jan?” 

A low, bitter laugh answered him. 

“Once upon a time, yes. Aren’t you being 
rather a dog in the manger, Tony?” 

“I don’t think so. I want you to be happy—at 
least, part of me does. I must be able to help 
you some way. It doesn’t seem possible that love 
like mine should be quite impotent. Why didn’t 
you marry him, Jan?” 

“What a question! You might as well ask a 


208 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 

man you had run over whether he was getting 
plenty of exercise. Don’t you know that I’m not 
marriageable—and why? So why bother about 
it? I shall never marry again, my dear, if it 
gives you any pleasure to know it. I may later 
on drift—I don’t know. Not very far, I believe, 
but that is on the knees of the gods. Don’t look 
so worried, Tony! Do you want my sacred word 
of honour that I will not again stray from the 
paths of virtue? I think that I can’t give it to 
you. There are distinctly more temptations in 
life than there used to be, and no one has a right 
to say me nay, in any case. Certainly not you. 
You paid ten thousand to repudiate ownership. 
And not the family. They are doing their best 
to persuade people that there never were more 
than three Desmond girls. But I will do my best. 
As for love, it will not pass this way again, as 
the quack advertisements say, and I shall never 
marry without it. If I sell myself, it shall 
be an honest affair—cash down for goods sup¬ 
plied, and no one but myself will be any the worse 
for it.” 

“You seem to have thought it out.” 

“Oh, yes,” said Jan frankly. “I’ve had to, you 
see. If I were ill again for a long time, or any- 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 209 


thing like that—well, it’s natural to take a market¬ 
able asset out of the cupboard, and look at it now 
and then, especially if one has nothing to lose by 
selling it; but—I’ll do my best.” 

“But if it comes to that, you’ll let me have the 
first offer, Jan? I think you owe me that.” 

Jan shook her head. 

“No, Tony dear. I’ve forgiven you, but I owe 
you nothing, and least of all that. I know your 
bargains of old. They are funny because they’re 
so one-sided, and what you get out of them I don’t 
see. Added to that, do you think I’d marry you 
for money, Tony?” 

“I don’t know. You did before.” 

“I did what?” 

“Well, you didn’t care very much about me, 
did you?” said Anthony, with a nervous laugh. 

He looked away as he spoke, and missed the 
slow whitening of her face and the stiffening of 
the small body. For a few minutes Jan sat 
silent, staring up at him with dilated eyes. Then 
she moved abruptly. 

“What do you mean, Tony? Do you think 
I never cared for you at all? Not when we were 
engaged, even? Never from the first?” 

“I’m not the sort one could get really fond of,” 


210 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


Anthony explained hastily. “I never expected 
you to. It was all right—I mean, it was all right 
from my point of view, but-” 

“Tony,” said Jan, with sudden fierceness, “I 
want you to go out of this room straight to your 
bungalow, and pack your things, and never come 
within fifty miles of this God-forgotten place 
again!” 

“Why?” 

“One of us has got to go, and you can afford 
it. I can’t. I’m sorry that I can’t offer you an 
allowance to keep away from me!” 

“It isn’t necessary,” said Anthony sharply. He 
turned to go, but hesitated with his hand on the 
door. 

“Jan, you don’t mean that I am never to see 
you again?” 

“Yes, I do.” 

“I—must.” 

“Six months ago it wasn’t necessary,” said Jan, 
and then added mercilessly: “There are plenty 
of other bought women to amuse you. I do not 
know whether it is more expensive to buy one out¬ 
right or hire one by the month, but no doubt you 
do. In any case it is not my affair.” 

Without waiting for a retort she left, him, 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 211 


stumbling blindly up the narrow stairs to fling 
herself down beside her beloved “magie case¬ 
ments,” pressing her face against the cool glass, 
her eyes burning, her throat convulsed with tear¬ 
less sobs. 

“Oh, God!” moaned Jan, in a dry whisper. 
“What have I done, what have I done that men 
should think that of me?” 

The sea gave her no answer. 


CHAPTER XVII 


Monica’s birthday fell on the second of April. 
The fact neither unduly depressed nor unduly 
elated her. 

“I am twenty-six,” she said aggressively. 
“Anyone may know it.” 

“Am I anyone?” said Felix meekly. 

He had developed a new and peculiarly Puck¬ 
like gleam of the eye in dealing with Monica 
which seldom failed to draw her fire. It did not 
fail now. 

“Do you think I mind it?” she demanded hotly. 

“Well, it’s past your first youth, isn’t it?” said 
Felix, with gentle commiseration. “I’m not say¬ 
ing that you look it, but, as they say in Scot¬ 
land-” 

“I don’t care what they say.” 

“As they say in Scotland,” Felix persevered, 
“if a lassie caan’t get a man before she’s sax an’ 
twenty-” 

“Well?” queried Monica dangerously. 

212 




THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 213 


Felix made mock of her above the crust of a 
ham sandwich. 

The day was pleasantly warm, and they were 
celebrating the anniversary by a picnic lunch in 
the cove. Felix, who had been invited as an ex¬ 
treme mark of condescension, had stretched himself 
full length along the sand, his red-brown head 
cradled in his arm, his blue eyes dancing in tune 
to the gentle slap-slap of the ripples breaking on 
the wet shingle. Monica, seated on a rock above 
his head, was at pains to let him know in detail 
what she thought of his person, his manners, and, 
indeed, his entire sex. Jan, nursing her knees 
and skimming an occasional flint at the surface of 
the cove, took no active part in their bickerings. 
She had little doubt of the ultimate issue, know¬ 
ing that the acrid Beatrice was fonder of her 
Benedict than she cared to admit, and that her 
surrender was merely a question of days. Help 
was as likely as not to hinder, and her attention 
was inclined to wander to her own affairs. 

“If I wanted a man,” said Monica hotly, “I 
should get one. It’s quite easy. All that one 
has to do is to make eyes, and say ‘How wonder¬ 
ful!’ every five minutes, and the silly rabbit will 
sit up and wave its ears to music. Bah!” 


214 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Do you ever say ‘Pshaw’ at all?” Felix en¬ 
quired innocently. “I have always wanted to 
know how that was pronounced.” 

“Idiot!” said Monica, and stood up with a jerk, 
her lithe body poised buoyant and tense against 
the land breeze, which puffed out her skirts on 
either side of her, her eyes shaded by her hand in 
the approved nautical gesture. 

“There’ll be the devil and all to pay to-morrow,” 
she remarked irrelevantly, with a quick jerk of her 
head towards the misted horizon. “If I hadn’t 
been born to-day we wouldn’t have got our picnic. 
Well, I suppose I must get back to work. You 
bore me, you two.” 

And she betook herself towards the cottage with 
the light, assured step of a goddess. Jan watched 
her departure with shining eyes and twitching lips. 

“What does a man love a woman for, Felix?” 

“Oh, for having fuzzy hair and a sharp tongue, 
I suppose.” Felix hurled a pebble after the re¬ 
treating figure. “There may be other reasons, 
but if there are I don’t know them.” 

“Yes, there are. Tell me, Felix. I seriously 
want to know.” 

“Why?” 

“It would be interesting.” Jan settled her chin 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 215 


on her knees and sat regarding him with grave, 
steady eyes. “I have wondered. I can tell you a 
number of things for which they do not love them. 
Not for being faithful, or honest, or even normally 
honourable. A man can love a woman, it seems, 
if he believes her to be morally and physically de¬ 
praved, utterly selfish and mercenary, a liar and a 
cheat. He will overlook all that if she is pretty 
and soft to touch. What is the use of that sort of 
love if the woman is ill or grows old, or loses her 
looks in an accident? Oh, it may be all right 
while it lasts—for a summer, or, perhaps, if she is 
very pretty, for a year or two; but is there nothing 
else?” 

“In the majority of cases I should say no.” 

“Then a woman is better without it!” said Jan 
energetically. “It is not a favour to be forgiven 
everything for the sake of one’s smooth flesh. It is 
an insult. It implies that the other things don’t 
matter, because our souls are too trivial, too 
naturally squalid, to be important. It is as if one 
built a palace for the king, and beggared oneself to 
do it, and then all he cared for when he came was 
the knocker of the door to use as a horse-collar. 
If that is all a man can love a woman for he had 
better turn Sultan at once, and have her strangled 


216 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


before she discovers what a mess of pottage it is for 
which she has sold her birthright.” 

“When did you think of all this, Jan?” 

“Does it matter? It’s true.” 

Felix did not respond immediately. He rolled 
over on his face, and cupped his hands into an 
hour-glass, watching meditatively the slow trickle 
of sand from palm to palm. His blue eyes were 
grave when he finally raised them to meet the 
passionate bitterness in hers. 

“You can’t do without bodies, Jan, not in this 
world; and they aren’t any the worse for being 
pretty ones. What would a flower be without the 
petals and scent and all the rest of it? That’s 
nature trying to get her couples married, and she 
doesn’t care a damn about the afterwards. That’s 
up to them. Don’t fall on a fellow for loving the 
body of you, Jan. That’s the natural beginning of 
it all. If it stops there I grant you there’s some¬ 
thing wrong; but does it? I don’t think so. 
There’s no limit to the thing once you get it started; 
and it must have grown to some extent to condone 
things as it does. You’re inclined to underrate 
that forgiveness because you don’t need it, but think 
how comfortable it would be if you did. Think 
what that year must have meant, watching and 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 217 


standing aside, and tearing his heart out so that 
you shouldn’t be troubled by it. I tell you the 
fellow was hardly sane when he applied for that 
divorce. He was all broken to bits, willing to 
do anything if only he could get away somewhere 
and hide himself. You don’t appreciate that part 
of it, because what you want above everything is 
trust; but don’t you see that trust implies a measure 
of self-confidence, and that is just what Lovatt 
hasn’t got? He simply can’t imagine it as possible 
that he has any claim on your consideration. He 
seems to have expected to be kicked aside from the 
first, and there’s nothing like expecting a thing to 
pave the way to assuming that it’s being done. If 
you’d been an unscrupulous minx you could have 
used him as an upper footman, and kept him happy 
with an occasional pat on the head. Don’t you see 
the bigness of that, Jan? One has to be damn big 
to efface oneself like that! If you had the smallest 
use for that fellow’s head you could have it any 
time. He’d cut it off himself, and only apologise 
that he hadn’t a second head ready when you 
wanted that.” 

Jan moved slightly, shading her eyes with her 
hands. 

“All that is no use to me, Felix.” 


218 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“No?” 

“No. I want to be believed in. I can’t be 
grateful for being forgiven for what I haven’t done. 
It isn’t in me. Yes, I see what you mean—that if 
I had been vicious I should be on my knees for the 
gift of what exasperates me now—but how does 
that help? I’m not humble. I can’t be. I 
haven’t done anything to be humble for, except that 
time when I asked you to marry me, and Tony 
wasn’t hurt by that. Forgiveness isn’t any use to 
me. Nothing is any use that doesn’t mean trust 
and respect, and the sort of honour men give to 
women who have never been smirched. I don’t 
want to be worshipped as a sort of Louise de la 
Valliere. I’m not good in that way, or bad in that 
way. I hate lies and shams. The only pretence I 
want to play at is that I’ve never been called—all 
the things I have been called. Tony puts me on a 
pedestal. How he does it I don’t know. He thinks 
that I sold myself to him in the first place, and 
cheated him afterwards—not once, but consistently 
—and all that makes no difference to the pedestal. 
I can’t understand that. I’m quite ready to admit 
that Tony probably lives on a higher plane than I 
shall ever reach, but even that doesn’t help. His 
love for me is a lie—all given for things that don’t 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 219 


exist. He will say that the queen can do no wrong, 
but I’m not a queen, and I can do wrong, only I 
haven’t. He won’t take my word; I suppose he 
thinks it the divine prerogative of queens to lie. 
Apparently there is nothing I can do which will 
smash his adoration or give him back his faith in 
me, and I don’t want to be adored. It’s a hopeless 
situation.” 

“You could always tell him that you cared, you 
know.” 

“Of course I could. Queens can do that sort of 
thing; and he would look away and pretend it 
didn’t hurt him to listen, or perhaps he would think 
I was saying it to get back all the perquisites that 
go with being his wife. I wish Tony could be 
ruined or crippled in some way; but he won’t be. 
Such things don’t happen in this life. He will go 
on being magnificently well and wealthy, and hav¬ 
ing everything to offer right up to the very end, and 
I shall go on being poor and disreputable, and 
having nothing to give in exchange except my 
wretched body, which can always be assessed and 
paid for in frocks to cover it; and, of course, I like 
all that sort of thing—silks, and furs, and tortoise¬ 
shell—and Tony knows that I like it. Oh! I wish 
I could die!” 


220 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Don’t say that sort of thing, Jan. It hurts.” 

“It’s all right. I shan’t do it. I never have 
any luck, and I promised you that I wouldn’t help 
myself. I don’t think, anyway, that I’d do it, 
because sooner or later Tony would be sure to get 
to hear of it, and it would hurt him rather a lot. 
I don’t want to do that; but there’s no harm in 
wishing, especially as wishes never come true—at 
least, mine don’t. Do yours?” 

“That remains to be seen.” 

“I don’t see why they should,” said Jan, with 
unexpected viciousness. “You’re every bit as 
depraved as I am. I don’t see why you should 
be comforted when I am tormented. It isn’t fair.” 

“It isn’t,” Felix agreed equably, “but as yet we 
cannot tell whether I shall be taken to Abraham’s 
—or, rather, Monica’s—bosom, so your charitable 
desires for my downfall may-” 

“Felix, you know I didn’t mean that!” Jan 
scrambled hastily to her knees and caught at the 
lapels of his coat with eager hands. 

“Listen. I wish you all the happiness in this 
world. Monica, and a home, and—and babies if 
you want them, and success and love, and all the 
money you want; and I will look on and not make 
faces. And you are the dearest, nicest man that 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 221 


ever lived, and I am an ungrateful beast, but only 
sometimes. Felix, you know that I didn’t mean 
to be a pig?” 

“Of course I know it. That’s all right.” 

“When are you going to ask her, dear? Soon?” 

“This afternoon, I think. As we have quarrelled 
all the morning she will be feeling exhausted, and 
the occasion is propitious.” 

Felix gathered his big limbs up from the sand 
and stretched himself luxuriously. 

“Frankly, this terrifies me,” he confessed with 
naive gravity. “Come with me to the door and 
hold my hand.” 

“You idiot!” scoffed Jan. “Do you think any¬ 
one can look at your beautiful self and-” 

“Well, you have looked at it pretty often; but 
let that pass. Certain facts are best buried in 
oblivion. I think I shall write her a masterly 
note and slip it under the door. I am, in fact, 
overcome with nervousness, but ‘It’s of no con¬ 
sequence,’ as Mr. Toots says. Do you think you 
could do this job for me, Jan? Just interview her 
to prepare the way, and tell her that I am overcome 
by emotion, and that I would esteem it an honour 
if she would consider me as a possible husband, 
but if she has a previous engagement it is of no 


222 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


consequence. Something simple and touching like 
that, to draw her attention to the subject, to which 
she can reply-” 

“You needn’t tell me what she would reply,” 
said Jan, looking up from packing the lunch-basket. 
“I know. She would tell me to go to Jericho and 
leave you to recover from your emotions by your¬ 
self, and rightly so. Pull yourself together, dear! 
She can’t bite you, you know.” 

“Bet you anything you like that she both can 
and does,” said Felix gloomily, and pulled himself 
to his feet. 

Monica had not gone all the way to the cottage. 
He found her sitting on a shelf of wind-dried grass, 
shredding a ribbon of purple seaweed. She 
frowned at him. 

“You spoilt the colour-scheme,” said she. And 
then, without warning, her eyes grew dark as wet 
violets, and her mouth smiled. 

“Well, get on with it!” said Monica breathlessly. 

“I have discovered that I love you. Isn’t that 
amazing?” 

“Very. What next?” 

“Next, I possess a flat which is quite the last 
word in flats, and sufficient income to allow us to 
keep house together. Shall we? Let’s!” 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 223 


“I don’t know,” said Monica, troubled. She 
looked away over his head, twisting her fingers. 

“Don’t you like me?” 

“Oh, that!” She gave him a fugitive glance, 
and pursed her lips to whistle. 

“Look here, how many women have a right to 
you?” 

“On my honour, none.” 

“Sure?” 

“Of course I’m sure.” 

“I don’t poach,” said Monica. She leaned for¬ 
ward on her hands, her sharp face flushed and du¬ 
bious. “Women get a beast of a time dealing with 
men, so it’s up to us to play fair by each other. I 
like you all right, but if it’s going to make some 
poor wretch miserable I don’t even want you. Do 
you see what I mean? Oh, well, I suppose it’s all 
right if you say so.” 

“It is.” 

Felix leaned his elbows on the rock and looked 
up at her, his blue eyes entirely serious. 

“My dear, I don’t set up one standard for you 
and another for myself, and when we’re married 
I shan’t either. We two are going to like each 
other and trust each other, and play fair by each 
other, just as we did before we met, without know- 


224 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


ing that there was anyone special to do it for, and 
that’s as it should be.” 

“Oh, very well,” said Monica, with recovered 
briskness. “I will marry you some time, if you 
like. Now go away. I have things to think 
about.” 

“Not at all,” said Felix. “I am no longer a 
suitor. I am your fiance, and I shall do as I like.” 

Thereupon he did as he liked. 

“Ah!” said Monica. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Anthony was troubled with ghosts, or, to be exact, 
a ghost, but as she flitted about the room her dis¬ 
guise varied. For the moment she was sitting in 
the shade of the heavy curtains contemplating the 
toes of her crossed feet beneath the sweep of jewel- 
hued taffeta. The line of her neck glowed against 
the dark background with the sheen of pale honey; 
her small, strong hands, linked one over another, 
were ringed, and no longer toil-worn. She was 
harmoniously expensive. 

Anthony had been living with the ghost for 
months, but it took very little notice of him and 
seldom spoke to him. Sometimes he spoke to it. 

Presently she rose and drifted over to the hearth, 
in the action becoming suddenly thinner and 
graver, exchanging her rustling skirts for a cheap 
black frock and coarse apron, and stood looking 
down at him with wide, frank eyes, and Anthony, 
sitting with his knees gathered up under his chin, 
met them with wistful pleading. 

“Why do you never speak to me, Jan?” 

225 


226 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


The ghost obviously did not consider that worth 
answering. It turned its back on him, and looked 
round the room in the quick, birdlike way it had, 
ignoring him. 

Anthony was used to its habits. He never tried 
to explain away its significance as an optical illu¬ 
sion or a projected thought-picture. Something 
of the sort it must obviously be, but the precise 
nature of the mystery did not interest him. It was 
sufficient that it existed. The twilight was its 
favourite time for appearing, drifting through the 
open window like a moth and taking possession 
of some chair or comer to sit brooding, or oc¬ 
casionally passing through the room from door to 
door, and so leaving him alone for the rest of the 
evening. To-night, apparently, it was disposed to 
stay, and Anthony watched it, fascinated. In¬ 
credible to think that he had once owned that vivid, 
dragon-fly creature. Bought wives were common 
enough, but this! 

“If you had only told me that you loved him, 
Jan, I would have made it all right,” said Anthony 
wistfully. “It would have been so easy if you had 
only trusted me a little.” 

The ghost was not interested in the hypothesis. 

Beyond the window the sky showed, troubled 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 227 


and cloud-tossed. The pale and intermittent 
moonlight seemed to fill the garden with hurrying 
shadows. Anthony, with much of the shadow in 
himself, was drawn towards the world of half-light, 
winds, and unreality. He pushed wide the win¬ 
dows, letting the sea wind enter with a cold, bracing 
rush, sending the curtains eddying against his face, 
bringing with it freedom, a chilling, breathless 
courage, a sort of peace. 

That day Anthony had paid a deferred and much- 
dreaded visit to his solicitors, carrying the rough 
draft of a will to be turned into legal phraseology, 
and facing the task with the intense, quivering 
reserve which was misread by ninety-nine people 
out of a hundred. The draft itself was surprising, 
as the lawyer, somewhat in dread of giving offence, 
had made an attempt to point out to him. 

“Surely it’s quite simple,” said Anthony sharply. 
“I want everything to go to my wife.” At the 
expression on the other’s face he coloured darkly. 
“To my late wife, then. I don’t care how you 
phrase it. To Jan Desmond, and afterwards to her 
children, if she has any, if not, to be disposed of as 
she thinks fit. I want that to be made perfectly 
clear and unconditional, if you can have a will 
without conditions.” 


228 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“With no reservations as to any second mar¬ 
riage?” the lawyer suggested discreetly, and was 
rewarded by a flash of the dark eyes. 

“With none, unless you can think of a way of 
giving my consent which would not be an imperti¬ 
nence after what has happened.” 

“Not many people would take the gift of half 
a million as an impertinence.” 

“I know. Is the rest of it perfectly clear? Jan 
is to be sole executrix. The legacies in my other 
will can remain, but only as recommendations, to 
be carried out or not as she thinks fit.” 

“Is that quite-” 

“She will think fit. It makes no real differ¬ 
ence, except that everything will have to be re¬ 
ceived from her hands, or not at all. I don’t think 
there’s anything else to be explained. Please 
draw that up at once—so that I can sign it to¬ 
day.” 

Things, it was explained to him, could not, 
strangely, be made as simple as all that, and for 
an hour Anthony submitted to legal technicalities 
with exemplary patience, in spite of his inward 
conviction that his affairs were being managed by 
a firm of imbeciles, whose only object was to 
hinder their progress. Somehow he got away 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 229 


from them at last, and wandered about London, 
objectless, but restless as an earthbound spirit. 
He lunched alone. Anthony had few intimate 
friends, his sensitive shyness keeping him aloof, 
an invisible barrier between him and his own kind. 
Even in the days when Jan had filled his house 
with guests he had been tossed like a negligible 
bit of flotsam to the edge of the whirlpool, and had 
played the part of host burdened by the uneasy 
consciousness that he counted for almost as little 
to the people who occupied his rooms as to the 
wife who gathered them together. Not that this 
had ever assumed the proportions of a grievance; 
to Anthony’s inborn humility it seemed as natural 
that he should be ignored as that Jan should be 
adored; but it had stabbed him to see her careless 
tolerance reflected in the attitude of her courtiers 
as in a hall of mirrors. That made it impossible 
to pretend that her occasional touches of kindness 
meant anything beyond a rather conscience-smitten 
memory of his existence—the sort of perfunctory 
pat one might bestow on a neglected dog. And in 
the end, because of a month of madness, those 
years of self-effacement were robbed of their fruit. 
She had been starving, and she had found it easier 
to turn for help to comparative strangers. It had 


230 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


needed that to bring home the full appreciation of 
failure. 

The next day he met Jan in the village street, 
slim and boyish in her blue jersey and sou’wester. 
There was rain in the air. She frowned at him. 

“Why haven’t you gone yet, Tony?” 

“I am going this afternoon. You needn’t 
grudge me a few hours, Jan!” 

“I don’t think I grudge you anything,” said Jan. 

She pulled her sou’wester over her eyes and 
surveyed him meditatively. 

“So this is really the very last and ultimate time 
of seeing you? Want to say good-bye, Tony?” 

“I hadn’t—thought about it.” 

“Think of it now. Do you?” 

“Yes, if you don’t mind.” 

“Oh, I don’t,” said Jan, her face suddenly 
brilliant with mischief. “A chance to flirt with 
you, you know, Tony. I love that. Come away 
from the houses. They cramp my style.” 

She turned, and he followed her, miserably 
conscious that they were back in their old and 
seemingly inevitable positions of whimsical lady 
and attendant footman. She led him to a rocky 
headland separating the village from the cove, 
curled herself up with her back to a friendly 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 231 


boulder, tucked her hands behind her head, and sat 
regarding him, aloof and mocking. 

“Well, Tony?” 

“I haven’t anything to say. I never have. Jan, 
don’t laugh at me.” 

“I shall,” said Jan, and broke into lilting, 
malicious laughter, her eyes gleaming, darkly pro¬ 
vocative behind the silk lashes. “Oh, Tony, Tony, 
it goes without saying that you’ve broken my heart. 
Why don’t you try to comfort me?” 

“Is there any way you could suggest?” 

“Of course. Two. You might make me out 
a large cheque in your usual manner of righting 

wrongs by a stroke of the pen, or you might-” 

“Well?” 

“Throw your arms about me and embr—r—r— 
ace me passionately. That’s the way it’s usually 
done, but in this case I don’t know that I should 
advise it.” 

“Jan, you have no right to say that!” Anthony 
flamed out of his submission into sudden rebellion. 
“I haven’t tried to hide that I love you, that I’d 
£ive all I have to do that! I tread on all that’s 
natural and human to give you what you want, 
and you—you dare to taunt me with it!” 

“Certainly I dare,” said Jan composedly. “It’s 



232 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


quite safe for one thing, and for another, I rather 
like to see you lose your temper. It’s good for 
you. You’re too fond of saving up fireworks for 
years, and then having a grand auto da fe. It may 
be more dignified but it’s very destructive. If you 
spared the rod and then decapitated the child the 
census would go down with a run. Similarly with 
wives, but I needn’t labour the point. And so you 
are leaving us, Tony? I don’t know, of course, 
but I rather fancy that you are not the sort of man 
to remain unattached for long, so let me know 
when my successor is fixed upon. There are 
things I could tell her about the job which might 
be of profit, and I should so like your second ven¬ 
ture to turn out a success.” 

“Good-bye,” said Anthony simply. 

Jan paused for a moment, looking up at him with 
wide, half-startled eyes, then held out her hands in 
the frank fellowship which was second nature 
to her. 

“I’m sorry, Tony!” she owned quickly. “Yes, 
that was all meant to hurt, and most of it was 
rather unworthy. It is best that you should go, 
my dear, but there needn’t be any bitterness 
between us to poison our memories of each other. 
Forgive me for being a bad wife to you, Tony. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 233 


I was and am careless and selfish, and a rotten little 
termagant into the bargain. For that and for all 
my sins which I cannot now remember—all right, 
is it? Very well. Do you want to kiss me?” 

“May I?” 

“Of course.” 

She jumped to her feet and raised her lips, her 
eyes shining and unnaturally dark in the white-rose 
face; surrendered her straight little body to lie 
quiet in his arms, and made no haste to free her¬ 
self. 

“You kiss me as the peasants in Italy kiss the 
feet of their Madonnas,” she whispered dreamily. 
“That isn’t the way, you know, but never mind. 
Do you think very badly of me, Tony?” 

“You know what I think.” 

“Do I? Do you?” 

“I think you’re the sweetest woman God ever 
made, and I don’t care what you’ve done. That 
is what it amounts to. I simply don’t know and 
don’t care. It doesn’t matter.” 

“Oh, yes, it does. Well, good-bye, Tony, and 
good luck to you!” 

She slipped from his arms and fled, stifling sobs 
as she went. The wind blew her on her way like 
a withered leaf. 


CHAPTER XIX 


Felix, entering the bungalow an hour after lunch, 
found Anthony tumbling his clothes into a suit-case, 
and stood aghast. 

“I say, you aren’t going!” 

“I’m afraid I mjust.” Anthony snapped the 
lock and stood up, moving towards a tray where 
the decanter stood beside some glasses. “May 
I—” His hand lingered over the stopper. 

“But look here, you can't,” Felix protested, 
ignoring the question. “There isn’t a train, 
anyway, from this little old end of a place.” 

“I know. I’m taking the motor-boat to Hove to 
save time. It’s pleasanter, anyway. Won’t you 
have a cigarette or anything?” 

“Thanks. But I say, you’re not going for 
good?” 

“I’m afraid so. Do you mind not asking me to 
explain why? I had—reasons.” Anthony felt 
for a cigarette and lighted it, anxious to have 
something to occupy the betraying fingers. “You 
will be staying, of course.” 

234 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 235 


“I shall,” said Felix absently. 

He found himself momentarily at a loss, guess¬ 
ing that it was an inappropriate time to blurt out 
the news of his own engagement, and his embarrass¬ 
ment did not pass unnoticed by the watching eyes; 
but his host’s shy courtesy saved him from the 
necessity of offering an excuse. Anthony had, in 
fact, a suggestion of his own to make, and did it 
with his usual disarming diffidence. 

“I have been wondering—I have this place till 
the end of the year, you know, and I shall not be 
using it. If you are staying I would be most 
awfully glad if you would make use of it. I hate 
to think of it empty. Do say you will!” 

“It’s frightfully good of you,” Felix admitted. 

His comfort-loving soul had indeed been com¬ 
pelled to swallow not a few camels of inconven¬ 
ience during the past few weeks at the village 
hostelry; but even the prospect of future ease 
failed to reconcile him to the prospect of Anthony’s 
departure. He eyed him dubiously, striving to 
improvise a plan for his detention, and seized on 
the first idea which presented itself. 

“I say, let me come with you to Hove, will you? 
You’ll want someone to bring back the motor-boat 
anyway, and I’ve got nothing to do this afternoon.” 


236 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


“Of course, if you like.” Anthony acquiesced 
cordially, “but—can you?” 

“Can I what?” 

“Run a motor-boat?” 

“Of course I can. I can do anything with en¬ 
gines,” said Felix, with easy self-confidence. 

He was still puzzling over his immediate course 
of action as he followed Anthony down to the boat¬ 
house. The sea was leaden, flicked here and there 
by a transient line of white, and the wind had 
fallen to an occasional chill, spray-salted puff. 
Anthony eyed it doubtfully for a moment before 
turning. 

“Are you sure you want to come after all? It’s 
going to be a bit cold and choppy later on, you 
know.” 

“Of course I’m sure,” said Felix. “I say, do 
you mind if I have the wheel to start with? I 
should like to get used to the boat before I’m left 
to my own devices.” 

Anthony acquiesced at once, and abandoned his 
place at the wheel, curling himself up among the 
cushions to watch his self-confident companion, 
then, after one or two tentative suggestions, trans¬ 
ferred his attention to the sky above him. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 237 


“It’s funny,” he remarked dreamily, “the way 
one gets into thinking that the clouds are a sort 
of painted ceiling. If one looks at them like 
this, straight up, one sees that they aren’t flat at 
all, any more than a cauldron full of smoke is flat, 
only we happen to be underneath. I say, I 
shouldn’t do that, you know! Not that it matters 
really, but the current round here makes it rather 
risky.” 

“Oh, right you are!” Felix obligingly aban¬ 
doned a series of daring experiments. “Am I 
making an utter fool of myself? Sorry!” 

“Oh, it’s all right really,” said Anthony, in hasty 
deprecation. “I’m fussy, that’s all.” 

He relapsed into silence, his dark face sombre 
and brooding, while Felix gave himself up to the 
enjoyment of his new toy. The wind had fresh¬ 
ened a little, roughening the surface of the grey 
water. The two symmetrical waves, breaking 
cleanly on either side of their bow, sent a fine veil 
of spray aft, to slap at his face with provocative 
horseplay. Felix, his eyes dancing at the chal¬ 
lenge, glanced shoreward, and was smitten by a 
new idea. He acted upon it on the instant. 

“I say, what are you doing?” cried Anthony, 


238 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


sitting up with a jerk. A gay laugh answered him. 

“That’s the girls’ cove, you know. I just 
wanted to see-” 

Before he could finish his sentence, before An¬ 
thony, springing to his feet, could snatch the wheel 
from his foolhardy hands, a quivering shock threw 
them both together in a struggling heap, and the 
frail motor-boat seemed not so much to break in 
pieces as to fly apart. For a second the nose bent 
upwards like a paper spill tilted in the air, then 
snapped and splintered into fragments. The 
broken stem sagged drunkenly, flinging both men 
into the water, and Anthony, acting almost with¬ 
out thought, made a clutch at the bigger man, 
knowing instinctively that, once parted among the 
sucking rollers, any recovery would be out of the 
question; but the spray cheated him, and the next 
moment he was driven down through the stinging 
water, helpless himself to do anything but keep his 
breath. Once he felt himself battered against 
solid rock, fended himself off with nothing worse 
than a scraped hand, and struck upwards, escap¬ 
ing somehow from the downward draw of the 
water. In rising he saw and grabbed at a vague 
blur, which might equally have been man or drift¬ 
wood, shot surfacewards, still keeping his hold, 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 239 


was overwhelmed in a welter of flying spray, and 
flung forwards, helpless as a fragment of paper, 
against something solid, resistant, and shaggy with 
weed. Five minutes later he was lying panting 
across the back of a ragged barrier of rock, which 
projected well clear of the water across the mouth 
of the cove. His left arm was twisted beneath 
him in a manner exquisitely painful, but still re¬ 
tained its treasure-trove—a long, curving fragment 
from the side of the motor boat, useful as a sup¬ 
port, worthless in comparison with the dislocated 
shoulder which had paid for it. A few yards 
away Felix was lying in a crumpled heap, arms 
flung wide, face tilted upwards, staring at the sky, 
and, as soon as he could fight down his betraying 
faintness, Anthony crawled over to him on all 
fours, thrust his sound hand into the drenched 
coat, and found a weak pulsation, steady enough in 
spite of its feebleness. Felix had been caught in 
the breakers and flung bodily into the air, falling 
battered slightly and stunned, but otherwise very 
little hurt, just out of reach of the waves. Luck 
had done her best for him, but Anthony, eyeing 
him apprehensively, was for a moment at a loss. 
He put his arm round the big body and made an 
effort to lift it higher, but was forced to desist, 


240 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


sick with pain. Prolonged physical exertion was 
out of the question. Anthony was no stronger than 
most men, and, in any case, it needed no more 
than a glance at the rock to know that it was cov¬ 
ered at high tide. 

“Not that it matters much for me,” Anthony mur¬ 
mured, half aloud. “But you, you massive brute, 
Jan wants you, it seems. I wish I could kill you 
for it. But you will be decent to her in your way. 
You’ve got to get out of this somehow.” 

He sat back on his heels, staring at the limp 
body, then crawled back to the broken plank he 
had himself retrieved, dragged it to the water, and 
deliberately tested it. On the landward side, 
where the sea was calmer, there was a reasonable 
chance of safety, and the current was setting in to¬ 
wards the shore. Clumsily, using hand and teeth, 
Anthony tore his handkerchief across from corner 
to corner and knotted the ends, rifled Felix’s pocket, 
and added to his cord; then, laboriously, cursing 
often at some new twinge of pain, he bound the 
board lengthwise, passing it through the arms and 
across the small of the back, so that Felix floated 
almost upright, unable equally to turn turtle or to 
slip down at the head. It was a clumsy arrange¬ 
ment, but it served, and when it was thrust out from 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 241 


the rock the untidy argosy bobbed its way shore¬ 
ward with occasional dipping immersions, but in 
the main bearing its cargo safely, the white face 
still tilted towards the sky. 

Anthony, weakened by the effort, sank forward 
on the rock, his head pillowed on his sound arm, 
and watched its hazardous progress intently. He 
was not troubled by any particular fear for him¬ 
self. Death might be very close, but that seemed 
somehow almost unimportant. Highly strung peo¬ 
ple are seldom visited by the same panic as their 
more stolid brethren. It seems almost as if they 
exhaust their fund of nervousness on the trivialities 
of life, and leave nothing but steady courage to 
meet the emergencies. At least to Anthony, the 
dawning of the awfully big adventure came almost 
as a matter of course. It did not occur to him 
that he had done anything particularly heroic in 
handing over his one chance of escape. At least, 
the temptation to use it had been small. For 
the last time he had bent his head and stood aside 
out of Jan’s life, and custom had lent a sort of 
easiness even to that. He wondered drearily how 
long it would take Felix to reduce her remaining 
scruples after the extinction of what was, presum¬ 
ably, the main obstacle to their marriage—him- 


242 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


self. Not long, probably, but that the dead would 
not be called upon to know. 

A larger wave hurled itself up the face of the 
rock, and spattered him with a network of light 
foam. Anthony moved a little higher, knowing 
that the change meant postponement only, and 
rather despising himself for the weakness of mak¬ 
ing it. The spring day was drawing to a close, 
and the slow approach of death was a cold affair. 
Anthony shivered a little, and closed his eyes, 
wishing that at least his clothes were dry; also he 
wished that he could hurry the tide. The cold 
numbed him, and he drowsed; it was almost with¬ 
out surprise that he felt the touch of a small, cold 
hand, and looked up to find Jan kneeling beside 
him, drenched and half naked, her wet hair cling¬ 
ing to her cheeks. At his questioning glance she 
coloured hotly, and put up a nervous hand to draw 
the wet linen closer over her breast, but her frank 
eyes did not drop. 

“I hadn’t any time to get my swimming things,” 
she explained hastily. “Felix was washed ashore, 
and I thought—I thought-” 

“Of course, I don’t count,” Anthony admitted. 

“Oh, this? My clothes don’t matter, but why 
are you here at all? Don’t you know that this will 



THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 243 


be under water in half an hour? It isn’t more 
than twenty minutes’ swim to the shore. You can 
do it easily.” 

“Normally, yes. I’m all right, Jan. It was 
good of you to come, but—you needn’t stay.” 

Jan ignored the snub, and showed no signs of 
going. Instead, she stared at him. 

“Are you—hurt, Tony?” 

“Of course not. Do leave me alone, Jan. I 
don’t want you and I won’t have you. If you try 
to stay I’ll fling you into the water.” 

“Why?” said Jan, with ominous calmness. 

She put out her hand and felt over him deliber¬ 
ately. Anthony pulled himself erect, but the effort 
to shake her off brought on another stab of sick 
agony which was apparent in his face. 

“What is it, Tony?” Jan’s lips were white. 
“Can’t you—swim?” 

“No. My shoulder is dislocated, I think. 
Don’t worry, dear. I shall probably be washed 
ashore all right; and if I’m not I don’t know that 
I care particularly. Please go, Jan. I should 
hate to drown before your eyes.” 

“You won’t,” said Jan. 

She measured the distance to the shore with 
some misgivings, and then shrugged her shoulders 


244 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


gallantly. “I’ll take you in. You can swim a 
little, I suppose, and I’ll keep you afloat. We can 
do it.” 

“I can’t.” Anthony coloured shamefacedly, as 
if confessing to an enormity. “It sounds a ridicu¬ 
lous thing to say, but I’m afraid I shall faint if I 
try even. I would try if I were sure you would 
drop me when you saw it was no use, but I’m not.” 

“I’m glad,” said Jan tonelessly, “that you’re 
not.” 

“Yes, you see it.” Anthony’s voice was eager. 
“It would simply mean your life for mine—your 
life as well as mine—it’s all before you. Royd 
is safe, and I’ve left you everything and made it 
easier for you. Everyone will know that I didn’t 
believe those things at the end. Jan, your staying 
here won’t do me any good. I’m not coming 
with you to let you fling your life away.” 

“Very well!” said Jan, with deliberation. 

She paused a moment regarding him, and then 
sat down on the edge of the rock, swinging her 
crossed feet half in half out of the turbulent water, 
steadying herself against the rush of the waves with 
outflung hands. For a little Anthony watched her, 
expecting her at any moment to slide forward and 
strike out for the shore, but when the minutes 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 245 


passed and she still remained he came closer to 
her and stood staring down uncomprehendingly. 

44 Jan, why don’t you go?” 

“Because I don’t choose to.” She glanced at 
him over one slim shoulder, mischievous as a water- 
nixy. “Think I’m afraid, Tony?” 

“You are going to stay here till—till-” 

“We both of us drown? Apparently so. How 
do you propose to prevent it, dear?” 

“But why? Why?” 

“That’s my affair,” said Jan, and broke into a 
little reckless song, her eyes given to the encroach¬ 
ing water, till Anthony caught at her shoulder and 
shook it fiercely, twisting her round to face him. 

“Jan, didn’t you hear what I said? Royd is 
safe. You can marry him to-morrow if you like. 
Don’t you understand? You can marry him when¬ 
ever you please.” 

“Oh, Felix!” said Jan absently. “He is in love 
with Monica. Didn’t he tell you? I have known 
it for weeks. I’m glad of it.” 

“Glad! Jan, is that why-” 

Jan studied him for a moment with brilliant 
eyes beneath down-curving lashes. 

“Why I want to commit suicide? Say it, Tony. 
Well, hardly. You thought I cared for him, I 



246 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


suppose. If I had I might have married him 
months ago.” 

“But there’s only one other reason I can think of, 
and that isn’t possible. Jan—you may laugh at 
me if you like—are you ready to die with me be¬ 
cause you—care for me?” 

“Maybe.” 

“After being suspected, and divorced, and half- 
starved? Jan, you can’t! It isn’t possible!” 

“If it isn’t, it isn’t,” said Jan cheerfully. 

“Is it true?” 

“You have just said it can’t be. No, don’t 
move, Tony. You keep the wind off as you are, 
and it’s cold, and I’m wet.” 

Anthony ignored the latter part of her sentence. 

“Since when? I’ve got to know.” 

“Since the beginning, of course. Why else 
should I have married you, beloved?” 

“But you were afraid of me?” 

“Shy of you, yes. What else did you expect? 
I’d never even kissed a man before. And you 
never gave me a chance to show that I—liked you.” 

“I have just realised,” said Anthony slowly, 
“that I am not only a fool, but a damned fool.” 

A wave dashed, gurgling, up the face of the rock 
and deluged them both, but neither heeded it. 


THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 247 


They were clinging together as children who have 
found each other after being lost for a long time 
in the dark. 

“My Jan!” said Anthony triumphantly. “My 
beautiful Jan!” 

“You are sure—quite sure—that you believe in 
me now?” 

“Of course. I have known for days, I think. 
Jan, how can you forgive me for what I’ve done?” 

“Oh, I’ll manage it somehow.” Jan settled her¬ 
self more comfortably in the encircling arm, and 
tilted her wild-rose lips. “I hated you sincerely 
for months, of course, but all that was finished long 
ago, and I believe it was mainly my fault after all. 
I must have given you the devil of a time; I 
wanted you to be jealous, you see.” 

“But, Jan, why?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. It seemed to me about time 
that you realised that I was—rather pretty. Am 
I?” 

“You are—oh, you know what you are, you ex¬ 
quisite thing! But it isn’t that. It s the the pil¬ 
grim soul in you, the courage, and the sweetness, 
and the fire—and you love me, you!” 

“Like this,” said Jan, and wound her arms round 
his neck. Her slim, half-naked body, white as the 


248 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


foam which splashed them, was strained against 
him in passionate ecstasy. 

Another wave broke over them. 

“Will you let me try to save you now?” whis¬ 
pered Jan, her lips against his cheek. 

“I don’t care. What does it matter what hap¬ 
pens so long as I have you like this now and for 
always? Why should we waste these last few 
minutes?” 

“It’s braver to take a chance while there is one.” 

“Perhaps. Very well. It’s all one.” 

“I’m afraid I shall have to hurt you rather.” 

“Oh, that doesn’t matter.” 

Anthony stumbled to his feet and held her close 
for a last kiss. 

“Not till death parts us, Jan? For ever and 
ever?” 

“Rot!” said Jan. “Death won’t part us. I 
should like to see him try!” 

Half an hour later Monica, patrolling the beach 
in oilskins, found them rolling in the surf at the 
edge of the sand, unconscious both of them, but 
breathing still. 


CHAPTER XX 


“And so you are going to get married,” said Mo¬ 
nica benevolently. “So are we, but I suppose you 
know that.” 

She was inclined to domineer as she dispensed 
hot coffee to the blanket-clad assembly. Even Fe¬ 
lix, lying at her feet, swathed in a flaunting eider¬ 
down, was pinched of face and pallid of lip, and 
the Lovatts were shadow-eyed ghosts. She had 
been at some pains to point out that the blame for 
the joint condition rested upon themselves. 

“Oh, I suppose so,” said Anthony, in answer to 
her last question. “Will you marry me to-morrow, 
Jan?” 

“It would be nice,” Jan owned dreamily. “Can 
we?” 

“Look at them!” mocked Felix from the eider¬ 
down. “They are holding hands under the blan¬ 
kets for all the world as if they were lovers in¬ 
stead of old married folks, while Monica and I, 
who are only engaged, are—most restrained.” 

“That is just why,” said Anthony calmly. “We 

249 


250 THE VALIANT GENTLEMAN 


are old hands at it, and we know. When you and 

Monica have been married as long-” 

“And when will that be?” hummed Felix under 
his breath. “Monica, I have been engaged two 
days, and I want to be married. See about it.” 

“Oh, I don’t care,” said Monica, with studied 
ungraciousness. “I’m ready when you like. I 
intend to take this novel on our honeymoon, and 
then I can work at it when you are playing golf, or 
taking walks, or whatever it is that you usually 
do. I mean to get a lot of work done.” 

“You do?” said Felix, slightly aghast, and then 
his eyes brightened with dancing malice. “You 
dare, young woman!” 

Suddenly the room was filled with laughter. 


THE END 
















































































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